Shimla: As expected, the infighting has proved very costly for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as three of its rebel candidates have won in the Himachal Pradesh assembly election the results of which were announced on Thursday. All the three winning rebels have relegated the official BJP nominess to third place with the Congress standing in the second position.
The three BJP rebels who won as independents include Hoshiyar Singh from Dehra, KL Thakur from Nalagarh in Solan, Hiteshwar Singh of Banjar in Kullu, all three are BJP rebels. The rebel factor in the BJP has become one of the main factors for the Congress party winning Himachal polls with 40 seats as against 25 of BJP.
BJP rebel Ashish Sharma who contested from Hamirpur constituency won the election by defeating his nearest Congress rival. Sharma defeated Congress candidate Pushpinder Verma by a margin of 12,899 votes. He was followed by BJP’s Narinder Thakur. In 2017, Narinder Thakur won on BJP ticket defeating Kuldeep Singh Pathania of Congress from this constituency.