Blessings do not work all the time even if it come from 10 Janpath. People of Himachal Pradesh have seen the impact of such blessings in the recent assembly election.

Two persons were chosen by 10 Janpath to contest the elections in Himachal Pradesh, one was a former commando and other was cook’s son. The former commando had once guarded Sonia Gandhi and the cook had served the Nehru-Gandhi family for three decades.

According to the report, former Special Protection Group commando Nand Lal won election but the cook’s son Prakash Chand Karad lost the polls and left a bitter taste. Nand Lal, a DIG-rank officer, registered victory on the Rampur reserved seat for the Congress in Shimla district. Nand Lal had joined ITBP as assistant commandant in 1980 and later he joined the SPG.

He resigned from his job last month and Congress gave him the party ticket by replacing Horticulture Minister and six-time MLA Singhi Ram. Nand lal defeated BJP’s Brij Lal by 6,000 votes. This was being said that Virbhadra Singh was not happy with Singhi Ram, the sitting MLA, and Congress replaced him and gave party ticket to Nand Lal.

The fate was not same in Prakash Chand Karad’s case and he lost the election despite the support from central leadership. Karad’s father Padma Ram was official cook of the Nehru-Gandhi family and served the family for almost thirty years. BJP’s Govind Ram defeated Karad, who got barely 7000 votes, by a margin of 6,687 votes on Arki Assembly constituency.

Congress party had preferred Karad and denied ticket to former Deputy Speaker Dharampal Thakur, a three-time winner in the Rajput-dominant constituency. The local Congress workers were also annoyed with party’s decision and they deliberately wanted to defeat Karad just to show the central leadership they rejected the move to choose Karad over Thakur.

Padma Ram, his father, expressed his grief over his son’s defeat and said:

My father Jirku Ram was a storekeeper with Jawaharlal Nehru. I was employed at the Prime Minister’s residence as a personal staff of Indira Gandhi at the age of 27. I also worked for Rajiv Gandhi and his family. I have worked with a number of Prime Ministers like Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Sanjay Rana, who was catering in-charge for the Congress party in Delhi for a long time, also lost the poll. BJP’s Ravinder Singh Ravi, a three-time MLA from Thural constituency in Kangra district, defeated him.