Reprieve to Congress govt in Himachal as party wins four out of six bypolls

Shimla: In a major reprieve to the Congress government led by Sukhvinder Sukhu in Himachal Pradesh, the party on Tuesday won four out of six bypolls.

However, it lost all four Lok Sabha seats to the BJP for the third time in a row.

The bypolls were necessitated as the sitting Congress MLAs cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha polls and were later suspended from the party. They resigned from the house and joined the BJP and were fielded by it.

With four new legislators, the Congress has stabilised its government in the state.

Two sitting legislators won their seats again. They were Sudhir Sharma from Dharamsala and Inder Dutt Lakhanpal from Barsar, both once loyalists of Congress stalwart and six-time Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who passed away in 2022.

Apart from them, the Congress’ Anuradha Rana won the Lahaul-Spiti Assembly constituency, Rakesh Kalia the Gagret seat, Captain Ranjit Singh Rana from Sujanpur, and Vivek Sharma from Kutlehar.

The entry of four new Congress legislators into the Assembly comes just a day after Speaker Kuldeep Pathania accepted the resignation of three Independent MLAs, who too had voted along with six Congress legislators in favour of the BJP candidate in the recently held Rajya Sabha election.

The resignations of Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur), and K.L. Thakur (Nalagarh) were accepted and their seats fell vacant from Monday, a notification by the Assembly Secretariat said.

The legislators had voted in favour of BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the February 27 Rajya Sabha elections along with the six Congress rebels. The three MLAs resigned from the assembly on March 22 but the Speaker did not accept their resignation.

With their resignation, the strength of legislators in the 68-strong house has been reduced to 59.

Currently, the Congress has 34 legislators, while the BJP has 25.

–IANS