Rebellion by 6 Himachal Congress rebels, failed Operation Lotus & ED raids: Is there a connection?
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Are the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids on the hospitals of two prominent Congress leaders of Himachal Pradesh, both close associates of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, the handiwork of party’s turncoats who recently switched to the BJP? The question is being widely debated in the political circles of the hill state as the central agency was hardly seen so active in Himachal in the past.
More so as the ED lodged its Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), which is similar to the police FIR, in the case pertaining to the Wednesday (July 31, 2024) raids on July 16, 2024, three days after the results of the byelections to three Assembly seats were announced.
Two of the seats, Dehra and Nalagarh, were won by the Congress while Hamirpur went to the BJP. Dehra had turned out to be a battle of prestige as CM Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur was in the fight and she defeated two-term former Independent MLA Hoshyar Singh, who was contesting on the BJP ticket.
A senior Congress leader alleged that the raids had clearly been conducted on the instructions of the BJP, which had failed to accomplish its “Operation Lotus” in Himachal. The first signals of the “Operation Lotus” came during the Himachal budget session in February when the ruling Congress, despite having 40 MLAs in the 68-member House, lost the crucial election for the lone Rajya Sabha seat from the state.
The reason: Six Congress MLAs — Sudhir Sharma (Dharamshala), Rajinder Rana (Sujanpur), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal (Barsar), Chaitanya Sharma (Gagret), Ravi Thakur (Lahaul-Spiti) and Davinder Kumar Bhutto (Kutlehar) — rebelled against the Sukhu-led Congress government and sided with the BJP.
The cross-voting by the six Congress rebels on February 27, 2024, led to the defeat of party’s senior leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi at the hands of BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan, who too was in the grand old party and joined the saffron unit before the 2022 Assembly elections. On February 29, Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania disqualified the six rebels from their Vidhan Sabha membership for allegedly flouting a Congress whip on voting for the budget.
All the six rebels were herded off by the BJP in resorts in party-ruled Haryana and Uttarakhand for a month. They returned home only after the BJP announced their candidature from the seats they had vacated following their disqualification. The bypolls (held on June 1 alongside the Lok Sabha election in Himachal) that ensured witnessed a bitter battle between the Congress and its turncoats as the latter tried to spill the “secrets” of their parent party’s top leadership. Sudhir Sharma released several videos detailing the alleged shady deals of Congress leaders. CM Sukhu was the main target.
In the bypoll results on June 4, only Sudhir and Inder Dutt could retain their seats on the BJP ticket while the remaining four turncoats had to bite the dust. After the June bypolls and the three byelections conducted recently, the Congress stands at the same tally of 40 seats as it was after the 2022 Assembly elections. The BJP strength, though, has risen from 25 to 28.
