Shimla (Himachal Pradesh): Six rebel Congress MLAs, who were residing in Haryana's Panchkula, were on Friday flown in a chartered plane to Uttarakhand's capital Dehradun. From there, they were taken to Rishikesh, where they are staying in a hotel.
The six rebel Congress MLAs were staying in a hotel at Panchkula since February 27. Sources said that a chartered plane carrying Congress rebel leaders Sudhir Sharma, Rajendra Rana, Chaitanya Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Devendra Bhutto and Inder Dutt Lakhanpal took off from Panchkula and landed at the Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun.
"The MLAs were taken to Rishikesh in different vehicles," sources added. Three independent MLAs - KL Thakur, Hoshiar Singh and Ashish Sharma are also with the six rebel legislators.
Meanwhile, On Friday, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, "Today the atmosphere in the state has become such that the MLAs was in the custody of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). They were staying at the Lalit Hotel in Panchkula for nine days. Today we came to know that they (the rebel MLAs) has been taken in a chartered plane."
The Chief Minister also lashed out at the rebel MLAs saying they will regret the cross-voting in the Rajya Sabha elections and their efforts to topple the Congress government in the state.
According to the Chief Minister, the relatives of the rebels were asking them to return to Congress and hence they have been shifted from Panchkula.
"The MLAs who left us, there are six Congress and 3 independent MLAs. They must be pained, because they know that we have done wrong. Democracy has been weakened.They will always have a regret in their mind that we tried to topple an elected government. The BJP has never seen interest of the state," added Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu.
It may be noted that the six rebel Congress MLAs and three independent MLAs had cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha elections, due to which Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi was defeated and BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan was elected to the Upper House of the Parliament. Due to cross voting of nine MLAs, both the candidates got 34-34 votes and then BJP won on the basis of a lottery.
