The long blood line of Himachal rebellion: A feud between CM Sukhu and the late Virbhadra Singh going back years

Not many were surprised when the son of six-time Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and state PWD minister Vikramaditya Singh offered his resignation from the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu Cabinet on Wednesday while accusing the latter of humiliating his father, deepening the political crisis in the hill state following the party’s loss in the poll for the sole Rajya Sabha seat a day earlier.

The bad blood between CM Sukhu and Vikramaditya goes way back, to the time of “Raja sahib”, as Virbhadra was fondly called, and was an open secret in the state. In his lifetime, Virbhadra did not shy away from publicly rebuking Sukhu, including blaming him for the Congress’s defeat in the 2017 Assembly elections, saying he did not possess any organisational skills and had appointed non-entities as district office-bearers. Sukhu, in turn, had accused Virbhadra of “pursuing the Opposition’s policy”. “He has opposed most of the senior leaders, including former chief minister Ram Lal Thakur, former Union minister Sukh Ram, senior party leaders Anand Sharma and Vidya Stokes,” Sukhu had said.

Political scientist Dr Harish Thakur calls their relationship an “enforced enmity”. “Virbhadra never appointed Sukhu to any post, not even of a chairman,” he points out.

Congress old-timers say Virbhadra’s distrust in Sukhu originated from the latter’s proximity to his arch-rival Pandit Sukh Ram. Another political observer says their differences also stemmed from their different ways of life.

While Virbhadra was a royal family scion seen to be “born with a golden spoon”, Sukhu was the son of a Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (HPTDC) bus driver and did ordinary jobs like selling milk at a booth in Chotta Shimla during his youth.

Their trajectories