Chief Parliamentary Secretaries should quit, contest assembly polls again: Anurag Thakur

Hamirpur: Former Union minister Anurag Thakur on Tuesday called upon the six Chief Parliamentary Secretaries to contest assembly polls again from their seats after the High Court quashed their appointments, an official statement said.

On Wednesday last week, the Himachal Pradesh High Court declared that the law under which the appointments were made was void. A division bench of the high court comprising Justices Vivek Thakur and B C Negi had also directed that all the facilities and privileges of these CPSs be withdrawn immediately.

Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had appointed six CPSs -- Sanjay Awasthi from Arki Assembly, Sunder Singh from Kullu, Ram Kumar from Doon, Mohan Lal Barakta from Rohru, Ashish Butail from Palampur and Kishori Lal from Baijnath -- on January 8, 2023, ahead of cabinet expansion.

The BJP has been demanding that the membership of all the legislatures appointed as CPS be cancelled. However, Technical Education Minister Rajesh Dharmani maintained that the CPS were appointed under the act passed by the Vidhan Sabha. They do not come under the preview of office of profit and the Vidhan Sabha membership of six CPS is safe.

As per the statement, Thakur said that in the wake of the High Court judgment, the six Chief Parliamentary secretaries should quit their seats and contest fresh assembly elections from their seats.

He said that the money spent on the CPS should also be deposited in the treasury of the state government. The Congress was aware that the appointment of MLAs as CPS was against the law.

The state is under debt of Rs 96,000 crore. Despite this, the Congress government has increased the debt by giving facilities to the CPS. This is playing with the interests of the public, he added.

The former Union minister said that the false guarantees of Himachal Congress have been exposed across the country. The condition of the Congress has become such that now the party's national president Mallikarjun Kharge has started questioning Rahul Gandhi's policies.