Congress will name Rajya Sabha candidate when filing nomination: Himachal CM

The name of the Congress candidate for the lone Rajya Sabha seat in Himachal Pradesh will be disclosed at the time of the filing of nominations on Thursday (March 5, 2026), Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Wednesday (March 4, 2026).

The candidate would be from Himachal Pradesh, Mr. Sukhu told media persons on the occasion of Holi.

March 5 is the last date for the filing of nominations for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election; polling will be held on March 16. The election is required as the six-year term of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Indu Goswami, elected unopposed in 2020, is coming to an end.

“There is neither any suspense nor fear over the election,” Mr. Sukhu said, adding that democracy would not be “sold like the previous time”.

With a clear majority in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly, the Congress’s victory should be a foregone conclusion, but the party is haunted by its bitter experience in the previous Rajya Sabha election, where it lost the seat to the BJP despite having 40 MLAs and the backing of three Independent legislators.

In the previous election in February 2024, BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan defeated Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi after a tie as six Congress MLAs cross-voted in favour of the BJP. The three Independents also voted against the Congress, and both candidates polled 34 votes each.

There are currently 40 Congress members and 28 BJP members in the State Assembly. A meeting of the Himachal Pradesh Congress Legislative Party has been convened on March 5.

So far, neither the Congress nor the BJP have announced their candidates, and BJP leaders have maintained that they would field a candidate only if the Congress candidate was not from Himachal Pradesh.

According to sources in the Congress, the names being considered by the party this year include former Union Minister Anand Sharma, former State president Pratibha Singh (wife of the late former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh), Congress in-charge for the State Rajni Patil, Himachal Pradesh Health Minister Dhani Ram Shandil, former Education Minister Asha Kumari, IT advisor to the Chief Minister Gokul Butail, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera, and the Chief Minister’s loyalists, including his political advisor Sunil Bittu and Advocate General Anup Ratan.

Indian Youth Congress general secretary Nigam Bandhari’s name has also emerged. Mr. Bhandari hails from Kinnaur district, and was among the shirtless demonstrators at the recent AI Impact Summit in Delhi.