himachal pradesh key candidate

Rakesh Singha, 65, was first elected in 1993 as a member of the legislative assembly representing the Shimla constituency. However, he was disqualified from holding his seat following a decision of the Supreme Court which upheld his 1987 conviction for involvement in a murder case from 1978 during his time as a student. He came in the third position in the 2012 Himachal Pradesh assembly election from Theog. In 2017, Singha was re-elected from the Theog constituency because of his huge support base for the communist student movement and trade union. Singha won the election upstaging BJP's Rakesh Verma by a margin of just 1,983 votes.