BJP releases Himachal poll candidates' list

NEW DELHI: Majority of the sitting MLAs were renominated but deputy Speaker of the dissolved Assembly Ram Dass Malangar was dropped from the BJP''s list of candidates for next month''s Assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh.
Of the 34 sitting MLAs, the party has retained 26 and dropped eight. Of the 66 candidates, 11 belong to Scheduled Caste, one to Scheduled Tribe and five women.
The list was released here on Thursday by BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan.
"BJP is going it alone and will have no alliance with Sukh Ram of Himachal Vikas Congress," he told reporters.
The party had a new entrant with Speaker of dissolved state Assembly Gulab Singh Thakur joining the party from Congress.
Former Agriculture Minister Vidya Sagar did not figure in the list of candidates while the fate of state minister Hari Narain Saini hung in balance.
Candersen (Kullu), Nirmala (Pragpur), Chet Ram Negi (Kinnaur) are among those sitting MLAs denied party tickets while Karan Singh (Banjjar) and Narinder Bragata (Shimla) have shifted to Kullu and Jubbal-Kotkhai respectively.
Former minister Shayama Sharma, former MLAs Jagat Singh Negi, Satya Pal Kamboj and Shiv Kumar were other notable omissions from the BJP list.
The candidates for Nalagarh and Theog seats are yet to be announced. While the name of state minister Hari Narain Saini has been bracketed with Lakhvinder Singh Rana for the Nalagarh seat, former BJP MLA from Theog Rakesh Verma has already resigned from the party and the search for another candidate is on.
There are 20 new faces in the list including party spokespersons Ganesh Dutt (Shimla), Randhir Sharma (Kotkehloor), B K Chauhan, a retired IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre, from Chamba, zila parishad chairman Chander Mohan Thakur and Rattan Jagdamba from Nahan and Kangra respectively.