Background
Prem Kumar Dhumal was born on 10th April 1944 in Samirpur village, Hamirpur district. His father was Mahant Ram.
Prem Kumar Dhumal was born on 10th April 1944 in Samirpur village, Hamirpur district. His father was Mahant Ram.
Member of the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly.
He is an Indian politician who has twice been Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh from March 1998 to March 2003 and again from 1st January 2008 to 25th December 2012. Presently, he holds the designation of Leader of Opposition in state assembly. Dhumal holds Master of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees following his education at Doaba College in Jalandhar and Guru Nanak Development University, Amritsar.
He became a lecturer at a private college in Punjab.
Dhumal married Sheela, with whom he has two sons, Arun Thakur and Anurag Thakur. Dhumal became vice-president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha in 1982.
He was president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Himachal Pradesh from 1993 and became the state"s Chief Minister in March 1998 after winning the Bamsan constituency of the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly with a margin of 18,000 votes. He headed the BJP-Himachal Vikas Congress coalition government for its full statutory term of five years and became Leader of the Opposition when the BJP lost power in 2003, winning only 16 seats despite support from the NDA Union government.
Dhumal"s tenure as Chief Minister was not without problems, notably when four BJP ministers and three other BJP MLAs rebelled and made allegations of widespread corruption.
The period also saw significant infrastructure developments, particularly of roads, and gave rise to Dhumal being called the Sadak walla Chief Minister. Dhumal resigned his seat in the Himachal Pradesh legislative assembly upon winning the Hamirpur constituency in a 2007 by-election for the Lok Sabha. The BJP lost power in the 2012 elections.
After the sudden death of Chand in 1993, Dhumal became active in state politics. This resulted in the rebels being expelled by the state party but then reinstated by the national party, which brokered a deal.
The latter is also a politician and has been a member of the 14th and 15th Lok Sabhas. In 1984, he was selected as the candidate for the Hamirpur parliamentary constituency when the sitting Member of the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly (Modern Language Association), Jagdev Chand, refused to stand.
