'BJP confident of winning all 4 seats in hill state'

FORMER chief minister of Himachal Pradesh and leader of the Opposition Jai Ram Thakur believes that the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led Congress government in the state will survive only till parliamentary polls.

"It is very difficult for them to survive given the situation they (Congress) are in," he told Harpreet Bajwa in an interview. Excerpts: In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won all 4 seats in Himachal Pradesh but in the by-election, it lost the Mandi seat. How do you see the party performing in parliamentary polls? In the last parliamentary polls, we led on all 68 assembly seats.

The then BJP MP from Mandi Ram Saroop had died followed by the death of former CM Virbhadra Singh. Pratibha Singh, Virbhadra's wife, won that election due to the sympathy factor. The Singhs belong to a royal family and thus a major part of their erstwhile kingdom falls in the Mandi constituency such as Rampur and Kinnaur. We lost that poll by only 7,000 votes. Now the situation is different. First, there is no sympathy wave and secondly, it is a general election. Another difference is that Pratibha Singh has never visited the constituency since her poll victory. Her son Vikramaditya Singh is fighting in her place and it will reflect against him, too. We will win all four seats.