BJP fields 6 Congress rebels in Himachal Assembly bypolls

Shimla: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named six former Congress MLAs, disqualified from the House, as its candidates for the Himachal Pradesh Assembly bypolls.

The BJP on Tuesday named its candidates for the Assembly bypolls in several states, including Gujarat, Sikkim, West Bengal and Karnataka.

The party has fielded the six MLAs from the seats they held as Congress members before their disqualification.

The BJP nominated Sudhir Sharma from Dharamshala, Ravi Thakur from Lahaul and Spiti, Rajinder Rana from Sujanpur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal from Barsar, Chetanya Sharma from Gagret and Devinder Kumar Bhutto from Kutlehar.

All six of them switched over to the BJP from the Congress on March 23, nearly a month after being disqualified from the Himachal Pradesh Assembly for defying a party whip to be present in the House and vote in favour of the government during the cut motions and budget.

These MLAs and three Independents had voted in favour of the BJP nominee Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha polls held in the state on February 27, triggering a crisis for the Congress-led government in the state.

The three independents, Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur constituency), Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra) and K L Thakur (Nalagarh), submitted their resignation on March 22 and joined the BJP on the next day.

The Himachal Pradesh Assembly bypolls will be held on June 1, along with the election to the four Lok Sabha seats in the state -- Hamirpur, Shimla, Mandi and Kangra.

With the disqualification of six Congress MLAs, the strength of the ruling party came down from 40 to 34, including the Speaker who can vote only in the case of a tie during a floor test, in the 68-member Assembly. The BJP has 25 members.

Ever since the Rajya Sabha polls, the BJP and Congress have been trading charges with the ruling party slamming the opposition for hatching a conspiracy to topple the democratically elected government in the state by using money power and maintaining that the public will not forgive the Congress rebels for their betrayal.

The BJP has said that the Congress government is in the minority and the chief minister should have resigned on moral grounds. BJP leaders, the six Congress rebels and independent legislators also lashed at the government, especially Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, for humiliating the MLAs and bringing development to a halt.

Rana on Saturday said more legislators were feeling suffocated in the Congress and were in contact with them. They will also show the courage to leave the Congress in the coming days, he claimed.

The rebels had slammed the Congress leadership for causing a "political disaster" and maintained that the state government was on a ventilator.