Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has turned a political visit into a punchline — publicly 'inviting' Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to return to Shimla in 2027, but only for a Congress swearing-in ceremony. The jab came on Monday, 2 November 2026, as Sukhu weighed in on Sarma's reported presence in the state on a BJP organisational mission.

Sukhu's post, written in Hindi, acknowledged that Sarma had expressed a desire to visit Himachal during a swearing-in ceremony. The Congress CM's response was pointed: 'unhe 2027 mein prades mein phir se Congress ki sarkar banne par hone wale shapath grahan samaroh mein amantrit kiya jayega' — 'he will be invited to the swearing-in ceremony when Congress forms the government in the state again in 2027.'

Sarma's mission: stitching together a fractured state BJP

According to Sukhu, the Bharatiya Janata Party has sent Sarma to Himachal Pradesh with a specific brief — to unite what the Chief Minister described as five factions within the state party. The deployment of a high-profile out-of-state leader for internal consolidation is a familiar playbook in Indian politics, typically signalling that local leadership has failed to resolve its own fault lines.

Sarma is one of the BJP's most prominent organisational troubleshooters, a status he built through his own dramatic political journey — once a Congress stalwart in Assam before crossing over to the BJP ahead of the 2016 Assam assembly elections. His credibility as a fixer makes him a logical choice for such missions, but Sukhu's framing casts the visit as evidence of BJP's pre-poll anxiety rather than strength.

Sukhu's forecast: fewer seats, 16 MLAs in trouble

The Congress CM went further, predicting that the BJP would win fewer seats in 2027 than it did in 2022 — a significant claim, given that the party had already lost that election. He added that 16 sitting BJP MLAs are not in a position to win re-election. These are political assertions, and the specific figures are not independently verifiable from public records.

What is established fact: Congress defeated the incumbent BJP government in the 2022 Himachal Pradesh assembly elections, ending the party's five-year term and bringing Sukhu to power in December 2022. Himachal Pradesh has a well-documented pattern of alternating between Congress and BJP at every election cycle, making 2027 a genuinely competitive contest regardless of current positioning.

The pre-poll sparring begins in earnest

With the 2027 Himachal Pradesh assembly elections still roughly a year away, the public exchange signals that the campaign season has effectively started. Chief ministers commenting on each other's party affairs across state lines is standard fare in Indian electoral politics — it generates headlines, energises base voters, and sets an early narrative frame. Sukhu is clearly betting that framing BJP's organisational visit as a sign of weakness is more useful than letting it pass unremarked.

Whether Sarma's visit actually produces the unity the BJP needs — and whether those 16 MLAs can mount credible defences of their seats — will be the real story to watch as candidate lists and coalition signals emerge over the next twelve months. For now, the Congress CM has drawn first blood in the war of words.