Shimla: The delimitation of assembly constituencies influenced the choice of Congress candidates for Himachal Pradesh assembly polls with 21 out of 23 sitting MLAs getting renomination while 22 new faces figuring in the list of party nominees.
About a dozen kin of former Congress leaders have been accommodated and four women and four persons from royal background have found place in the list.
HPCC president, V.B. Singh had to shift to newly created Shimla (Rural) constituency as his traditional Rohroo seat has been reserved for Scheduled Caste while the leader of the opposition Vidya Stokes, who had shifted Kumarsein in 2007, has reverted to her old Theog constituency as Kumarsein constituency has been scrapped.
The sitting MLAs, Yograj (Pragpur) and Sohan Lal (Kusumpti) have not been given tickets as their reserved constituencies have been opened this time but Sudhir Sharma and Rakesh Kalia, whose Baijnath and Chintpurni constituencies were reserved for SC, was accommodated and given ticket from Dharamsala and Gagret respectively.
Similarly, former minister Kuldeep Kumar, whose Gagret reserved constituency has be dereserved, was shifted to Chintpurni.
The new faces in Congress list included Pawan Nayyar
(Chamba), Kamal Kishore (Indiora-SC), Brig (retd) Rajinder Singh Rana(Dehra), Sanjay Rattan (Jwalamukhi), Kishori Lal (Baijnath-SC), Ravi Thakur (Lahaul and Spiti-ST), Bhuvneshwar Gaur (Manali), Romesh Dogra (Bhoranj-SC), Tara Thakur(Seraj), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal (Badsar), Satpal Raizada(Una), Sanjay Awasthi (Arki), Ram Kumar(Doon), Omkar Singh (Paonta Sahib), Mohan Lal Brakta (Rohroo-SC), Vinod Sultanpuri ( Kasauli), Sunder Singh Thakur (Kullu), Aniruddh Singh (Kusumpti), Harish Janarta (Shimla),Yadvendra Goma (Jaisinghpur-SC) and Bambar Thakur (Bilaspur) and Chander Shekhar (Dharampur).
The Women candidates included All India Mahila Congress President Anita Verma, Leader of the opposition in the assembly, Vidya Stokes, AICC Secretary Asha Kumari and Tara Thakur.
The list includes 25 Rajputs, 13 Brahmins, 17 SC candidates, 3 ST, 3 OBC and 7 others.
The number of reserved seats has increased from 16 to 17 seventeen. Thural seat in Kangra district has been abolished while a new constituency of Manali has been added in Kullu district.
The boundaries of at least two dozen constituencies have been altered while fifteen constituencies renamed.
The sequence of districts has also been reversed and Kinnaur (ST) constituency, which was at number one, has been made the last (68th) constituency and Shimla district which followed Kinnaur is now second from the bottom.
PTI
