Worried about rejection of MP’s nomination, BJP names Kargil hero as covering candidate

MANALI: Not filing income tax (I-T) returns for four years may put BPJ Mandi candidate

Ram Swaroop Sharma

in trouble. Worried about rejection of his nomination, BJP named Brig Khushal Thakur as the covering candidate on Friday, two days after Sharma had filed nomination.


The Himachal Congress has moved the Election Commission seeking action against Sharma for not filing I-T returns for last four years. He filed the four returns just days before he was file the nomination as the BJP candidate.

On Friday,

Kargil

war hero Brig Thakur filed his nomination from Mandi constituency as the BJP covering candidate. Thakur was already in queue seeking BJP ticket to contest from Mandi but sitting MP Sharma was renominated by the party. He might get a chance to contest if BJP’s fears come true.

When he filed nomination papers on Wednesday, Sharma had no covering candidate. However, just before his nomination, Congress state president Kuldeep Singh Rathore complained to EC that he had filed his four years’ I-T returns just before nomination filing. Not only the income tax department settled his returns in three days, but also gave him an NOC, Congress had alleged.

According to sources, BJP don’t want to take risk so it named Thakur as the covering candidate. The war veteran, however, denied this was the case.

While speaking to mediapersons after filing his nomination, Brig Thakur said he was already a covering candidate to Ram Swaroop but completion of documents had caused some delay. “As soon as documents were complete, I filed my nomination,” he added.

Immediately after filing nomination, Thakur was in campaign modi. He said it was all about political will that PM Narendra Modi took so many difficult decisions and “became popular not just in India but also in the whole world”. “I won’t talk about the Army and national security but OROP is a result of Modi’s political will. This is because of Modi that we attacked militants after entering the Pakistan. Otherwise we used to look at them helplessly. People need a leader like Modi again and again,” he said.