Himachal Assembly Speaker disqualifies 6 Congress MLAs who cross-voted in Rajya Sabha elections
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TNR Desk
Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha Speaker Kuldeep Pathania has disqualified from the Assembly all six rebel Congress MLAs who cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha elections on February 27.
The Speaker disqualified them while finding them guilty of violating the party’s whip to vote in favour of the official Congress nominee, Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
After hearing arguments from both sides, Pathania had reserved his decision on Wednesday (February 28). The six disqualified Congress MLAs are Rajendra Rana from Sujanpur, Sudhir Sharma from Dharamshala, Davinder Bhutto from Kutlehar, ID Lakhanpal from Badsar, Ravi Thakur from Lahaul-Spiti and Chaitanya Sharma from Gagret.
Instead of voting for party candidate Singhvi, the MLAs had voted for BJP’s Harsh Mahajan. Due to this, Singhvi lost the Rajya Sabha elections. Congress chief whip and cabinet minister Harshvardhan Chauhan had complained about this to Speaker Pathania under the anti-defection law.
This had triggered an intense infighting in the ruling Congress in Himachal. Amidst discussions about the fall of the government, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had called all Congress MLAs to his government residence Oak Over for a breakfast meeting on Thursday morning. Everyone was told to reach there by 9.30 am.
However, Vikramaditya Singh, who resigned from the post of PWD minister on Wednesday, did not reach there. Yesterday, about 10 hours after his resignation, he had said that the decision on this would be taken by the two observers — former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Karnataka Deputy CM DK Shivakumar — sent to Shimla by the high command to resolve the crisis.
