Congress would be restricted to 40 LS seats, says HM Amit Shah in Himachal

Una (Himachal Pradesh), May 25 (IANS) Claiming that the Congress would be restricted to 40 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday praised four-time BJP MP Anurag Thakur, saying "the BJP has sent a very big leader to your constituency”. 

“You people are lucky to get an MP like Anurag Thakur. Vote wisely,” Amit Shah said while addressing an election rally at Amb in Himachal Pradesh's Una district in support of Union Minister Anurag Thakur, the BJP candidate from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat.

Praising Thakur for the development of Hamirpur and connecting youngsters to BJP’s ideology, the Home Minister said, “Modiji has given you a readymade minister. I have known Anurag ‘bhai’ for years. Now he’s working as PM Modi’s companion in the Cabinet.

“You will not find such a parliamentarian even if you search with a lamp. Modiji loves the Himalayas and Himachal. Sometimes the people of Gujarat get jealous thinking whether Modiji is from Himachal or Gujarat,” he said.

Reiterating that Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) “is a part of India and we will take it”, Amit Shah hit out at the Congress for trying to “frighten us” by saying the neighbouring country possesses atom bombs.

“Rahul ‘Baba’, we are from the BJP, we are not scared of atom bomb. POK is India's, it will remain so, and we will take it,” he said.

The Home Minister also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already won 310 seats in the first five phases of Lok Sabha polls and the target of '400 paar' would be achieved in the remaining two phases.

Since his maiden electoral victory in the May 2008 parliamentary bypoll at the age of 34, Anurag Thakur served as the BJP’s youth wing President from 2011 to 2016.

He won the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by a record margin of 3.87 lakh votes, with a vote share of 69 per cent.

The Congress last won from Hamirpur in 1996 after which the seat remained a BJP bastion with Anurag Thakur’s father and two-time Himachal Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal winning the seat thrice.

The seat has been with the BJP since 1998 when Suresh Chandel was elected as the MP. However, Chandel was caught in a sting operation after the cash-for-query scandal in the Parliament in 2005.

In 2007, Dhumal became the MP from Hamirpur but later resigned to take over as the Chief Minister. This necessitated the bypoll in 2008 which Anurag Thakur won before retaining the seat in 2009, 2014, and 2019.

Polling in the four Lok Sabha seats in Himachal Pradesh will be held on June 1. The results will be out on June 4.

--IANS

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