TNR Exclusive: 6 disqualified Himachal Congress MLAs called by BJP high command in Delhi, meeting likely to take place today evening
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TNR Desk
The six disqualified Himachal Pradesh Congress MLAs are learnt to have been called by the BJP high command in New Delhi and the meeting is likely to take place on Thursday (March 21, 2024) evening.
Sources told TNR that the fate of six disqualified MLAs could be decided today as it would be known after the meeting whether the saffron party would field them from the six Assembly seats where the bypolls have been necessitated due to their disqualification from the House.
TNR had earlier MLAs were all set to join the BJP anytime soon in New Delhi, but for a stringent condition put forth by them, said sources.
There were reports on Wednesday (March 20) as well that the six Congress MLAs — Sudhir Sharma (Dharamshala), Rajinder Rana (Sujanpur), Ravi Thakur (Lahaul-Spiti), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal (Barsar), Chaitanya Sharma (Gagret) and Davinder Bhutto (Kutlehar) — could have joined the BJP, but that didn’t happen.
Sources said the six disqualified Congress MLAs have demanded that they should be allocated the BJP ticket for the constituency they would be defending at the same time when they would be joining the saffron party in New Delhi.
Ticket ‘promise’ to Hoshyar Singh not kept
In doing so, the six leaders have cited the example of Independent MLA from Dehra in Kangra district, Hoshyar Singh, who had joined the BJP in the presence of party president JP Nadda in Shimla before the 2022 Assembly elections but was subsequently denied the ticket from the constituency despite being “promised”.
Hoshyar Singh had then contested as an Independent against BJP candidate Ravinder Singh Ravi, a loyalist of former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal who lost the election by a margin of 3,877 votes.
Following the announcement of byelections in the six Assembly constituencies of Himachal Pradesh alongside the Lok Sabha elections, the entire focus has shifted to what the BJP’s strategy would be on the choice of candidates. The party had pulled off a major coup in the Rajya Sabha election to the lone seat on February 27 when, despite having 25 MLAs, it beat the ruling Congress that had 40 legislators.
The question being widely debated in Himachal politics is whether the BJP will grant the tickets to all the six Congress rebels who had cross-voted for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election and whose disqualification from the Assembly has necessitated the byelections. But by doing so, the saffron party is bound to trigger dissent within the party ranks, particularly in seats where the victory margin in the 2022 Assembly elections was narrow.
2 ex-ministers in contention
In tribal Lahaul-Spiti constituency, the 1,616-vote victory margin of disqualified Congress MLA Ravi Thakur over BJP’s Ram Lal Markanda wasn’t too high. Markanda was a minister in the previous BJP government led by Jai Ram Thakur and has strong connections in the party. In Kutlehar (Hamirpur), Davinder Kumar Bhutto of the Congress had defeated BJP’s Virender Kanwar by 7,579 votes.
Virender too is a powerful BJP leader and remained a minister during the Jai Ram government. He is currently the party’s state vice-president.
Rana defeated ex-CM Dhumal
In Sujanpur seat of Hamirpur, which is the home turf of all-powerful Union Minister Anurag Thakur, Congress rebel Rajinder Singh Rana had defeated BJP’s Ranjeet Singh by a mere 399 votes. Rana’s entry into the BJP won’t be acceptable to a section of the leadership as he had defeated the party’s chief ministerial candidate and Anurag’s father Prem Kumar Dhumal in the 2017 elections.
