Shimla, June 2 The BJP may or may not pull off a hat-trick in Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh in the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 with the Matrize Exit Poll predicting two to four seats for it in the hill state.
Voting for the four Lok Sabha seats of the state was held on June 1 and there was a straight contest between the Congress and the BJP.
Union Minister Anurag Thakur and actress-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut are in the fray for the BJP from the Hamirpur and Mandi seats, respectively. Congress veteran Anand Sharma, currently a Rajya Sabha member is trying his luck from the new battleground Kangra.
The Congress won and formed a government in the state in December 2022. Chief Minister Sukhvinder Sukhu led the election campaigning on all four Lok Sabha seats, besides the bypoll in six Assembly seats, previously occupied by the Congress - and whose outcome will spell out the fate of his government.
The BJP, which has won all four Lok Sabha seats in Himachal since 2014, is banking high on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "charisma" after his three election rallies to retain all the Parliamentary seats and win six Assembly seats while the Congress is eyeing its strong vote bank of 2.5-lakh government employees, whose demand of restoring the old pension scheme has been implemented by its government.
The Aam Aadmi Party remained missing from the state's political landscape, like the November 2022 Assembly polls.
Political observers told IANS that the BJP has managed an edge over the Congress by holding a statewide campaign with public meetings by Prime Minister Modi and the party's national leadership, comprising Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP President J.P. Nadda, Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh and Piyush Goyal.
The Congress largely banked on Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
In the 2019 general polls, the BJP had won all four parliamentary seats, however, in the by-poll, the Congress won the Mandi seat.
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