Himachal row: A Day After RS Election attainment, BJP set up For a Takeover

हिमाचल विवाद: राज्यसभा चुनाव में जीत के एक दिन बाद, बीजेपी ने कब्जे की तैयारी कर ली है

 

The former state CM and BJP leader met the Governor to ask for a floor test ahead of the budget session on 28^th Feb, Party High Command probe on Sukhu government.

Chandigarh: Understand the reason for cross voting within Congress, a day after BJP’s success in Rajya Sabha elections . In the mean time BJP has swung into action to apparently engineer the collapse of the Congress government headed by CM Himachal Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.

Source: IANS

BJP’s Himachal Legislative Party, headed by former Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, met Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla in the morning (February 28). Urged the Governor to allow division of votes before passing the state budget today . BJP has taken the first step to prove its majority in the Himachal assembly.

“The assembly speaker did not entertain our demand for the division of votes despite the provision in the law. It was obvious that the CM is scared of since he does not have the numbers now to stay in government,” Thakur told reporters outside the Governor’s House in state capital of Shimla.

As the Budget Session begins in some time from now, the state gears up for some degree of political drama . It is learnt that the Sukhu government is mulling the suspension of some BJP lawmakers before the passing of the budget to avoid a floor test.

Meanwhile, Congress has been busy convincing six Congress MLAs and three independents who were earlier supporting the Sukhu government but who cross voted for BJP in Tuesday’s RS election.

Karnataka deputy CM D.K. Shivkumar and former Haryana CM Bhupinder Hooda are on their way to Shimla as part of Congress’s damage control exercise.

BJP’s Jai Ram Thakur, however, claimed that Congress was unduly penalising these MLAs by serving an anti-defection law notice on them and asking them to appear before the Speaker today afternoon. The move is against the law as the anti-defection law does not apply in the Rajya Sabha polls, he said.

What happens to the Himachal congress Before Tuesday’s high-voltage political drama , Congress had 40 MLAs and the support of three more Independents who tided it over the majority mark of 35 in the 68-member state assembly.

After nine MLAs – six of Congress and three independents – cross voted for BJP in Tuesday’s Rajya Sabha polls, the Congress government is technically now one short of the majority mark.

Congress MLAs who cross voted include Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur , Inder Dutt Lakhanpal , Chaitanya Sharma and Devender Bhutto while the independents are K.L. Thakur, Hoshiyar Singh and Ashish Sharma.

More Congress MLAs, as BJP claims, are sitting on the fence, ready to switch sides as they were unhappy with the functioning of the current government.

It is speculated that there is a coup of sorts in progress within the Congress – the outcome of infighting between Sukhu and Himachal Congress chief Pratibha Singh, wife of eight-time Congress chief minister, the late Virbhadra Singh. Ultimately the house caught fire due to the lamp in the house .

Pratibha, it is believed, had been hoping for the CM’s post after Congress won the state election in November 2022, but the party instead made Sukhu the chief minister.

Most of the six MLAs who now are rebelling against the party are believed to be former loyalists of Virbhadra.

The six are all incommunicado since casting their votes. As per media reports, they were first taken to Panchkula in Haryana late on Tuesday evening. They were reportedly accompanied by the three independents.Right now, they are believed to be somewhere in Himachal but their location is not known.