A legacy and a burden

It is a fact of life that in Indian politics, widows are best-placed to claim credit for their husbands — at times more than sons. And so it was that Pratibha Singh, the widow of former Himachal Pradesh chief minister and later Union minister, Virbhadra Singh, was last week made chief of the Himachal Pradesh unit of the Congress. The state goes to the polls in a couple of months and the party has high expectations.

Certainly, everyone in Himachal Pradesh knows Virbhadra: And his widow is no newbie in politics, either. She won the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency in 2004 and, more recently, the by-election to the seat that fell vacant when her husband died last year.

He was considered a performing chief minister. It was during his tenure that full electrification in the state was achieved. The last village to get electricity in the state was Kibber, in Spiti, as long ago as1988! (It is also one of the highest villages in the world to have got a road). Through his political career, he resisted the temptation of the politics that has been staple for other HP politicians — playing off Upper Himachal against Lower Himachal. Because the needs and wants of the two regions are different, there are few politicians who enjoy equal acceptability in the Kangra region (the heart of Lower Himachal Pradesh, which sends 16 seats to the Assembly) and Shimla (the centre for Upper Himachal Pradesh, which has just eight seats in the legislature but enjoys disproportionate power). But if Virbhadra got a four-lane road built for Upper Himachal, he ensured Lower Himachal got a six-lane road. Himachal Pradesh has a generally higher rate of literacy than the rest of India, second only to Kerala. But during his tenure as chief minister, he saw to it that there was no village that didn’t have a primary school.

If there was criticism of him, it was because of his autocratic style. He was the last Raja of the Rampur-Bushahr dynasty, and was last chief minister in 2017, when the Congress was ousted in the Assembly elections. On the other hand, he was also a five-time chief minister, a two-term minister of state in the Union government, and a politician who became a Member of Parliament first in 1962! The somewhat strained relationship between Virbhadra and then Congress president Rahul Gandhi was the Congress’s worst-kept secret, but apparently all was forgiven and forgotten. Campaigning for Virbhadra in the 2019 elections, Mr Gandhi said at a public meeting in Una: “Virbhadra Singh is my teacher and guru in politics. I respect him. I am not like Narendra Modi, who rewarded his coach in politics, L K Advani, with a slap on the face.”

Pratibha Singh will inherit her husband’s legacy, though its negative aspects might be a little bit moderate. The Raja could not prevent the exit of some of the best-known faces in the state from the Congress: They left because of him. And they were all from Kangra — Vijai Singh Mankotia and Sukh Ram, to name only two. In fact, in 1998, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Prem Kumar Dhumal might never have had the chance to form the government in Himachal Pradesh if the Congress had heeded Mr Sukh Ram’s condition — that anyone but Virbhadra be made chief minister.

And while Virbhadra’s challenges were mostly created by him, his wife will face a different set of adversaries. Kuldeep Rathore, who was state Congress chief for years, is out and unlikely to be friendly. Mukesh Agnihotri, leader of the Congress Legislature Party and the man who has held the fort in leading the charge in the Assembly, was expecting to get the job. Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, the charismatic former PCC chief, might have been a better choice. The party’s press release says he will have an important role in the committee that will screen candidates for the election: Which means if enough candidates he has selected win, he will stake a claim to head the government. Anand Sharma, former Union minister for external affairs and deputy leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, who was never allowed to grow because of Virbhadra (who had no time for him), can now show his mettle.

Can the Congress claw its way back in Himachal Pradesh? After the disastrous loss in all by-elections in November 2021, BJP Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur blamed high prices for the debacle. And a new entrant in the state is the Aam Aadmi Party. Possibly for the first time, the state will see three-cornered contests. The Himachal Pradesh Assembly election will be interesting.