A four-time Congress MLA, Mukesh Agnihotri, 60, has been the Chief of the Opposition (LoP) within the Himachal Pradesh Meeting after being elected because the Congress Legislature Occasion (CLP) chief following the November 2017 state Meeting polls.
Earlier than becoming a member of politics, Agnihotri labored as a journalist for greater than a decade, throughout which he additionally served as a member of the Himachal State Press Advisory Committee, Authorities Pahari Language Committee, and different panels.
Mentored by Himachal Congress stalwart and six-time chief minister late Virbhadra Singh, Agnihotri contested his first election in 2003 from the Santokgarh Meeting seat in Una district. He was re-elected from the constituency in 2007. He went on to win from the Haroli constituency, which was often known as Santokhgarh earlier than delimitation, within the 2012 and 2017 Meeting polls.
Agnihotri was inducted into the earlier Virbhadra Singh Cupboard as trade minister with further portfolios, together with labour and employment, parliamentary affairs, data and public relations, from 2012 to 2017.
He was appointed because the parliamentary secretary and Housing Board chairman in 2003. He had been a member of assorted Home panels together with the Committees on Subordinate Laws, Basic Improvement, Public Accounts, and Human Improvement between 2008 and 2012.
Because the LoP, Agnihotri has aggressively led the Congress within the Home, elevating essential points like corruption, worth rise and unemployment to nook the Jairam Thakur-led BJP authorities forward of the Meeting elections slated for subsequent month.
Within the faction-ridden HP Congress, Agnihotri has emerged as one of many main celebration contenders for the CM’s publish within the run-up to the polls. Nevertheless, one other formidable problem going through the grand outdated celebration is to make sure a united face because it appears to oust the BJP from energy, using the hill state’s historical past since Nineteen Nineties of not repeating the incumbent authorities.