Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu will be Himachal Pradesh’s new chief minister, while Mukesh Agnihotri has been selected as deputy chief minister. On 10th December 2022, Chhattisgarh’s chief minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel made this announcement after the meeting of the elected Congress MLA held in Shimla – the capital of the hill state. Baghel also informed that the leaders will take the oath of their respective posts on Sunday 11th December 2022 at 11 am.
A resolution empowering the Congress high command to choose the future leader of the legislature party was approved by the newly elected Congress MLAs. Accordingly, the leaders were chosen by the high command. Pratibha Singh, the state party president and the MP for Mandi, and Mukesh Agnihotri, the leader of the opposition in the departing assembly, were the leading contenders for the position of chief minister in addition to Sukhu, who served as the chairman of the Congress campaign committee during the assembly election. The new CM was announced amid sloganeering by the supporters of Pratibha Singh, demanding to make her the CM
A brief account of the political career of Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu
Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu is a 58-year-old four-term MLA from Nadaun in Hamirpur. In the recently held assembly elections, he defeated Vijay Kumar of the BJP by a margin of 3300 votes from the Nadaun seat. Born on 27th March 1964 in Nadaun, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu is considered to be a close associate of Rahul Gandhi.
While the former Congress CM of the state Virbhadra Singh was from a royal family, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu rose from the grassroots level in politics. The new CM of Himachal Pradesh had a humble beginning, and his father was a government employee.
He started his political career as an activist at Himachal Pradesh University, then joined NSUI and went on to join the Congress party. He has contested five assembly polls so far and won four.
Sukhu has been a lifetime loyal member of the Congress party. He joined the Congress party as a student at the age of 17 and went on to become the state president of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) from 1989 to 1995. He later became the chief of party State Youth Congress. He held this post from 1998 to 2008.
He won the municipal election in Shimla twice between 1992 and 2002 and was made the secretary of the state unit of his party in 2008. Sukhvinder Singh Sukhi is a law graduate. He was the president of the party from 2013 to 2019.
In 2003, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu fought his first assembly election from Nadaun and won. He was reelected in the 2007 elections. However, he had to face a defeat in 2012. In 2017, he managed to return to the state assembly as an elected MLA. He was chief whip of the Congress Legislature party from 2007 to 2012.
Sukhu was the chairman of the campaign committee of the Congress party in the assembly elections and was the face of the party in the elections. Although he is a four-time MLA, he was never a minister in the state, and didn’t hold any other position like Chief Parliamentary Secretary (CPS) or even Chairman of a Board or Corporation.
After the party’s high command named him as the chief minister candidate, he said, “I was never in any race for any post and would not be in the future. I am a Congress party worker. I never had longed for any post. Party has given me so much and to follow the party’s order is my duty.”
Congress snatched power from the Bharatiya Janata Party in Himachal Pradesh after a closely fought election in which the Congress party secured 40 out of 68 assembly seats while the BJP got 25 seats.
