Himachal by-election: Three Independent MLAs will feel at home when they rejoin the BJP
Following their resignation from the Vidhan Sabha today, three Independent MLAs, KL Thakur (Nalagarh), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur), and Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), will be returning home when they join the BJP. Their background is saffron, and they ran as independent candidates in the 2022 Assembly election when the BJP refused to give them a ticket.
“The BJP’s ideology will always remain our ideology in the past, present, and future,” said KL Thakur. After the BJP refused him a ticket, he ran as an independent in the 2022 elections, although he had previously won the 2012 Assembly election from Nalagarh. After the BJP denied them a ticket, Hoshiyar Singh from Delhi and Ashish Sharma from Hamirpur both ran as independent candidates.
In addition to praising Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and BJP National President JP Nadda, the three announced that they will officially join the BJP and run for office on the party ticket in the byelections.
The Congress has 34 MLAs while the BJP has 25 parliamentarians in the 68-member Himachal Vidhan Sabha. According to a Congress official, “the BJP persuaded the three to resign from the Assembly as part of its strategy to ensure that the Congress does not woo them to get the simple majority of 35.” The Speaker would have to fill the three seats in Nalagarh, Hamirpur, and Dehra in the event that their resignations are accepted.
Cross-voting in the February 27 Rajya Sabha election has thrown the Congress administration into a political impasse. It’s interesting to note that Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s home seat, Hamirpur, is home to four of the six disqualified Congress MLAs. Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra) and Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur), two of the three Independent MLAs, are also from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat, making the total six.
As a result, it is evident that Hamirpur is the location where the most animosity is growing. The outcome of the six Assembly byelections and the Lok Sabha elections will serve as a yardstick for Sukhu’s leadership, as even state Congress president Pratibha Singh and her minister son Vikramaditya Singh have criticized him.
It is possible that nine Assembly byelections would coincide with the Lok Sabha elections on June 2 if the Speaker accepts their resignations and informs the Election Commission of India of the seats up for election.
Interestingly, six Assembly seats in the Hamirpur parliamentary seat—Sujanpur, Hamirpur, and Barsar (Hamirpur), as well as Dehra (Kangra), Gagret, and Kutlehar (Una)—have become vacant.
Hoshiyar Singh said, “As part of vendetta politics unleashed by the Chief Minister, false cases have been registered against us and our family members.” Speaking in agreement, Thakur stated that the three had resigned for the sake of the state and of their own free choice. “People voted for us to guarantee growth in our communities, but since the Congress took office, that has not occurred. We never wavered in our belief in the BJP’s philosophy, even though we were denied a ticket for the 2022 elections. We will now run for the byelections with a BJP ticket,” he said.
We eventually had to become members of a political party. We thus see it as a blessing that we have the chance to rejoin the BJP and will run on the party’s ticket,” Ashish Sharma said.
