The term of the current State Legislative Assembly will come to an end by January, 2018. So, the election will be held in late 2017 to elect 68 members of the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly. The last election was held in 2012, in which Indian National Congress won and was able to form a government. The Chief Ministerial candidate of Congress was, Virbhadra Singh and he has been ruling Himachal Pradesh from 2012.
At present, the major parties that will be competing in 2017 election will be Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Himachal Lokhit Party (HILOPA). The election will be held in late 2017, during the months November or December. However, the exact dates have not been declared by the Election Commission.
In the election 2012, BJP was defeated by Congress with a difference of 10 seats and BJP gained the position of opposition party. This was due to their lack of strategy in choosing the candidate. However, this time they have learnt from their previous experience and have chosen candidate, who are popular in the particular ward. Though there are several local parties, competing in the election, it may be direct clash between BJP, Congress and AAP.
Himachal Pradesh has four parliamentary constituencies (PC) named Shimla, Kangra, Hamirpur and Mandi. Shimla is reserved for SC candidates. In this election 2017, there will be increase in number of voters by 1.3%, many being first time voters. Congress like last time is expecting to win the elections in all the four PCs.
Issues to be Taken Care of:
The problems people are facing are similar to other states like Corruption, Unemployment, and lack of infrastructures, price rise and overall economy slowdown. There is also a dispute over the distribution of Sutlej and Yamuna River, which has already been raised by politicians and needs to be taken care of. The global warming has also caused big hindrance to farmers in the state.
Election Date: November, 2017 (Tentative, Date yet to be announced)
Opinion Poll:
Following their debut in Punjab and Goa, AAP is the new entrant in the Himachal Elections 2017. There have been various opinion polls conducted in late 2016. In some opinion polls, they have mentioned that BJP will be winning this year’s election, whereas in some other polls, they have mentioned AAP may stand a chance. So, this time it will be clash between BJP and AAP. This may be due to the corruption charges in which Congress was accused, in addition to this there has been no development in State’s economy, so people might have lost their hope in Congress.
Candidate List:
All the major parties including BJP, Congress and AAP are yet to release their Chief Ministerial candidate. The Election commission also has not come up with any official information regarding the Nomination dates, Election date and candidate list. Once we receive concrete information regarding this we will be updating them.
