Shadows of unrest are looming over the newly-elected Bharatiya Janata Party government in Himachal Pradesh. The party had romped home to victory in the state elections held in November 2017.

A large section of the party is feeling left out of the process of Government formation in the state. The majority among these comprise of leaders belonging to the BJP bloc headed by the party’s pre-poll chief minister-designate Prem Kumar Dhumal.

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From the ‘so close yet so far’ perspective of these leaders, things would have been placed on an even keel had Dhumal won the elections, as was expected. As is the pre-poll practice in any political group expecting victory in the elections, the Dhumal league too had drawn up its lists of ministers, chairmen of boards and corporations, favorite bureaucrats for postings and such others.

But that was not to be. In a shocking result, Prem Kumar Dhumal lost his Sujanpur seat and so did some of his senior lieutenants, including state BJP chief Satpal Satti. Ironically, Dhumal was defeated by his one-time political disciple Rajender Rana, who had switched over to Congress, from the latter’s stronghold of Sujanpur.

With Dhumal thrown into the circle of vanquished, the Bharatiya Janata Party Central leadership chose to repose its faith in the relatively lesser known Jai Ram Thakur, a five-time election-winner from the state’s Mandi district.

Jai Ram Thakur announced his 10 member cabinet in the last week of December 2017. To the dismay of Dhumal loyalists, the top government body did not have even a single member from the Dhumal camp. It was a total washout with Thakur preferring to go with names like Anil Sharma, son of former Union minister Sukh Ram, who had jumped over to the BJP bandwagon just prior to the elections.

The Dhumal camp, however, retained a glimmer of hope what with appointments still to be made to the plethora of government boards and corporations in the coming months.

But these hopes have so far failed to materialize. CM Thakur has announced a number of names as heads of state institutions, but have stuck to his pogrom of total ignore to the Dhumal camp. Even senior leaders from the Dhumal camp, election-winners who had been senior ministers in the last BJP government headed by Dhumal, remain mere MLAs this time around.

What has really peeved the Dhumal camp is the fact that CM Thakur has chosen to appoint individuals who they say do not have any ‘political standing’, are turncoats — that is they had earlier resigned from the BJP and have rejoined it only now — and have no answerability to the general public.

It is not surprising that an anti-Thakur wave is silently building up within the Dhumal camp. This, Dhumal loyalists say, is sure to have an impact on the 2019 general elections.

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, however, seems to be least bothered by the concerns of the Dhumal camp. He is said to have the total backing of the BJP Central leadership, specifically Union Health Minister J P Nadda, and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which is having a free run in the state administration.

Perhaps, he knows his politics well.

(Raj Machhan is a senior journalist and a specialist in Digital Media. Views expressed are personal)