Shimla: The BJP has fielded all six disqualified MLAs, who left Congress to join it, in the upcoming Himachal Pradesh assembly bypolls.
It is noteworthy that along with the Lok Sabha elections, by-elections for the six assembly seats are to be held in Himachal on June 1. BJP on Tuesday released the list of candidates for the assembly elections on 14 seats in 4 states, which also includes six seats in Himachal.
The leaders include Sudhir Sharma from Dharamshala, Rajendra Rana from Sujanpur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal from Badsar, Chaitanya Sharma from Gagret, Ravi Thakur from Lahaul and Spiti, Devinder Kumar from Kutlahar. It is noteworthy that in the Himachal Assembly elections held in 2022, all these six leaders had won on Congress tickets.
On February 27, all of them were disqualified by the Speaker for cross-voting in the Rajya Sabha elections which saw Congress veteran Abhishek Manu Singhvi face a shock defeat to BJP's Harsh Mahajan.
After the dismissal from the Himachal Assembly, the six assembly seats in Himachal had become vacant and on March 17, the Election Commission had also announced by-elections on these six seats in Himachal along with the Lok Sabha elections.
On Saturday, March 23, these six Congress rebels joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi. Since then there were speculations that all of them would contest the by-elections on BJP ticket.
After joining the BJP, Sudhir Sharma while speaking at an event on Sunday March 24 targeted Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu over the state government's failure to install a statue of later Congress veteran leader Virbhadra Singh.
