Ahead of Lok Sabha election 2024, Six rebel Congress MLAs, who were disqualified from the Himachal Pradesh Assembly last month, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday, March 23.
Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devendra Bhutto, Rajendra Rana and Chaitanya Sharma joined the saffron camp in the presence of Himachal Pradesh BJP President Rajiv Bindal and Union Minister Anurag Thakur.
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The six rebel Congress MLAs and three Independents, who supported the Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led government, cross-voted for the BJP’s candidate in the Rajya Sabha polls.
Due to the cross-voting of these MLAs, senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi lost the Rajya Sabha election to the BJP's Harsh Mahajan, who was once the political advisor to former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. However, the government moved quickly and disqualified them. Last week, the Supreme Court refused to stay the order of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly speaker for disqualifying the rebel Congress leaders.
Earlier this month, Himachal’s high-profile minister Vikramaditya Singh had reportedly met the six rebel Congress MLAs at a hotel in Haryana’s Panchkula. Singh — son of Himachal Congress president Pratibha Singh — was said to have told Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu to take back the legislators.