DHARAMSHALA: After a delay of more than two months, Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Pathania has finally accepted the resignation of Independent MLAs Hoshyar Singh, Ashish Sharma and KL Thakur.
While Hoshyar Singh is a legislator from Dehra in Kangra district, Ashish represents Hamirpur seat in the Vidhan Sabha and Thakur Nalagarh. The trio had joined the BJP on March 23, a day after submitting their resignations and were looking to get elected on the saffron party’s ticket.
All three of them along with the six disqualified Congress MLAs had voted for BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the February 27 Rajya Sabha election from Himachal, leading to the defeat of ruling Congress nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi. This had caused much embarrassment to the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu government.
After the election victory, the BJP herded off the nine MLAs to resorts in party-ruled Haryana and Uttarakhand for nearly a month. Before returning home, all the nine formally joined the BJP in New Delhi. While the Election Commission announced bypoll to the six seats alongside the June 1 Himachal Pradesh Lok Sabha elections, the Independent MLAs, as they had desired, couldn’t seek re-election on the BJP ticket the same day.
By delaying the acceptance of their resignations, Speaker Pathania probably wanted to ward of any threat to the Sukhu government in terms of numbers in the Assembly. The Independent MLAs had even staged a protest for the acceptance of their resignations, but to no avail.
The Speaker, for his part, had put all the three on notice, seeking to know from them whether their resignations were under any pressure of allurement of the BJP. The trio had replied that their resignations were voluntary and duly submitted before the Speaker and the Assembly Secretary. They vehemently denied any external pressure influencing their decision.
The matter even reached Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla, who acknowledged the matter’s gravity but clarified his limited role. He had asserted that instructions regarding resignation acceptance fell within the Speaker’s purview. The three MLAs even approached the Himachal High Court where the case is pending.
