6 Congress MLAs disqualified by HP Assembly Speaker for Cross-Voting

Six Congress MLAs were disqualified by Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania who crossed-voted in the Rajya Sabha elections on Thursday.

Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania said, “Six MLAs, who contested on Congress symbol, attracted provisions of anti-defection law against themselves…I declare that the six people cease to be members of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly with immediate effect.”

The six MLAs disqualified are Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chaitanya Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Davinder K Bhutto, Rajinder Rana, and Sudhir Sharma.
Under the anti-defection law, Congress MLA and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Harsh Wardhan Chauhan filed a petition to disqualify the six MLAs.

After the 2022 Assembly elections, the 68-member state assembly consisted of 40 MLAs from the Congress and 25 from the BJP. The remaining three seats are held by independents.

With the six rebel MLAs disqualified the strength of the house comes down from 68 to 62 and the halfway mark is 32. The Congress now has 34 MLAs after losing six MLAs, while the BJP, including independents, has 28. Now, the Congress’s future will depend on its capacity to maintain the unity of the rest of its flock.

Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, summoned all of the Congress MLAs to a “breakfast meeting” in Shimla earlier today.

“It is an important meeting. Let’s see what happens…This is an informal meeting,” party MLA Ashish Butail said.

Congress MLA Sudarshan Singh Bablu said, “The CM has called everyone for breakfast. Let’s see what discussions are taking place…We received the message last night. Our Government will continue under the leadership of the Chief Minister.”

Bhupinder Hooda and DK Shivakumar, the Congress’s central observers, are also present at the conference. The observers are scheduled to report to the party high command today after meeting with the MLAs one-on-one on Wednesday.
BJP claimed that Congress has lost the moral standing to be in power after losing the majority in the Assembly.