6 disqualified Himachal Congress MLAs withdraw petition from SC
Six former Congress MLAs of Himachal Pradesh on Friday (May 10, 2024) withdrew their petition from the Supreme Court against the decision of the Assembly Speaker to disqualify them from the Vidhan Sabha.
Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania had disqualified the Congress MLAs — Sudhir Sharma (Dharamshala), Ravi Thakur (Lahaul-Spiti), Rajinder Rana (Sujanpur), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal (Barsar), Chaitanya Sharma (Gagret) and Davinder Kumar Bhutto (Kutlehar) — for allegedly defying a party whip to attend the House and vote in favour of the Himachal Pradesh government during the cut motion and budget session on February 29.
Two days before their disqualification, the six MLAs along with three Independent legislators — KL Thakur (Nalagarh), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and Hoshyar Singh (Dehra) — who had earlier announced support for the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu government voted for BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the February 27 Rajya Sabha election for the lone seat from Himachal.
Mahajan had defeated Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi despite the Sukhu government having 40 MLAs of its own and the BJP 25. After their disqualification, the six Congress MLAs joined the BJP, which has fielded them from the seats they had vacated.
On March 18, the Supreme Court had declined to halt the Speaker’s decision to disqualify the former MLAs. Senior advocate Abhinav Mukherjee, representing the former MLAs, informed a bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta of their decision to withdraw the petition. “We anticipated this outcome due to the elections,” remarked the bench, granting permission for the withdrawal.
The bypolls to the six Assembly seats are slated for June 1, coinciding with polling for the four Lok Sabha seats in Himachal. The results will be announced on June 4.
