The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday announced that six assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh will have bypolls on June 1. It will coincide with the seventh phase of Lok Sabha elections 2024. The polling will take place on the vacancies that arose due to the disqualification of six Congress members of legislative assembly (MLAs) who had cross-voted in Rajya Sabha election last month and defied the party whip.
In the state, bypolls will be held in Lahul and Spiti, Dharamshala, Sujanpur, Barsar, Gagret and Kutlehar. These pose a stiff challenge for the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh which seemed to be on the brink following cross-voting in the Rajya Sabha. It had last month led to the defeat of party nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi even as the party had a clear majority in the assembly.
In Himachal Pradesh, Congress has to prepare for the Lok Sabha polls as also for the crucial bypolls to six assembly seats.
The problems for the ruling party compounded after Himachal Pradesh public works department minister Vikramaditya Singh resigned. His resignation was not accepted even as his mother and state Congress chief Pratibha Singh took jibes at the way of functioning of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu. The crisis was averted due to the intervention of central party leaders.
BJP currently has 25 MLAs in the state assembly. Congress had won 40 seats in the assembly polls held in 2022. In the Rajya Sabha polls, three independent candidates apart from six Congress rebels had voted for the BJP candidate with both BJP and Congress nominees getting 34 votes each.
Disqualified Himachal Pradesh MLAs – Sudhir Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Ravi Thakur, Rajinder Rana, Chaitanya Sharma and Devinder Kumar Bhutto – had moved the Supreme Court against the decision of the assembly speaker.
The EC had announced the bypolls to five seats in Gujarat, four in Uttar Pradesh, two in West Bengal and one each in Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karanataka, Tripura, Telangana and Tamil Nadu.
All five assembly bypolls in Gujarat are being held due to the resignation of MLAs while that in Karnal in Haryana is being held due to the resignation of former Chief Minister Manhohar Lal Khattar, who is now the BJP candidate for Karnal Lok Sabha seat. Voting in bypolls will coincide with the date of the Lok Sabha poll in the state and votes will be counted on June 4.
(With agency inputs)
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Published: 16 Mar 2024, 08:00 PM IST