Himachal Pradesh election: Virbhadra Singh's son applies for Congress ticket

Shimla: Himachal Pradesh Youth Congress president Vikramaditya Singh on Tuesday applied for Congress ticket from Shimla (Rural) constituency, represented by his father and chief minister Virbhadra Singh.

Virbhadra Singh had already announced that Vikramaditya was the most suitable candidate from his constituency and also said that he himself can contest from any constituency except Shimla (Urban).

The HPCC had sought applications from ticket aspirants and asked the general category candidates to apply with fee of Rs 25,000 while the fee was Rs 15,000 for Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste candidates.

The HPCC had asked the candidates to apply for ticket by October 5 and later extended the date till October 10, which expired today.

About 400 candidates have applied for 68 seats.

Chetan Parmar, grandson of first chief minister Y S Parmar and son of former MLA Kush Parmar, has also applied for ticket from Nahan.

Vikramaditya Singh, who will turn 28 on October 17, said that the chief minister can contest from any constituency and would win with massive margin.

In 2012 also, he contested from Shimla (rural) for the first time after his Rohroo constituency was reserved for scheduled caste and won by a huge margin of 20,000 votes.

He said that the chief minister had paid equal attention to every part of the state and winning election was not an issue for him.

The Youth Congress leader said that the BJP, which was earlier claiming to win 60 plus seats, was now talking of winning 50 plus seats but the Congress did not believe in making tall claims and was sure to cross 40 seat mark.

Son or daughter of no other minister has applied for the ticket and all the sitting ministers are likely to seek re- election.

At present Congress has 35 members in the house and one seat was lying vacant while the BJP has 28 MLAs and four seats are held by independents.

Vikramaditya said that the BJP has not declared its chief ministerial candidate and the party was like a marriage party without bridegroom.