Himachal Pradesh: Crisis Facing Sukhu Government Staved off, Six Rebel Congress MLAs Disqualified

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Feb 29: Taking prompt action on the Congress petition for disciplinary actions against the rebel members of the Himachal Pradesh state Assembly, the speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania on Thursday ordered disqualification of all the six MLAs from the House.

The move would help stave off at least the immediate threat to the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu ministry as the disqualification of the six members would mean reducing the effective strength of the House from 68 to 62 and the majority mark from 35 to 32.

The effective strength of the Congress now would be 34 while the BJP which had 25 members and demanded dismissal of the Sukhu on the strength of support from the six rebel Congress members and three independents who had voted for the BJP candidate in the Tuesday’s Rajya Sabha elections, would now have only 28 members in the House, still short of four members for a majority.

To blunt the arguments of the lawyers of the rebel Congress members that voting in the Rajya Sabha elections did not attract anti-defection law as clarified by the Supreme Court time and again and therefore the MLAs could not be disqualified, the speaker took the disciplinary action against the members for flouting the party whip during voting on the state budget. The disqualification order make no mention of the voting in the Rajya Sabha elections which had triggered the political turmoil in the hill state.

The BJP had clapped for and congratulated the six MLAs for their ‘bravery’ on Wednesday when they came to the assembly, after staying the previous night in BJP-ruled Haryana. Their kick, however, has gone wide. The disqualified MLAs are Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devinder Kumar Bhutoo, Ravi Thakur, and Chetanya Sharma.

The Speaker said they have been disqualified for defying the party whip to vote in favour of the government on the Finance Bill in the house on Wednesday. The assembly passed the state Budget after the Speaker suspended 15 BJP MLAs.

The actions of the six MLAs violated the anti-defection law, the Speaker said. “It is a matter of record that the six members, when the party had issued a whip, they defied the whip. Whether it attracted the provision of the anti-defection law or not, this point was before me to decide. The members were present in the Assembly, but when the cut motions and demands were put to vote [during the Budget session], they were not inside the House. Also, yesterday (February 28), when the Finance Bill was presented in the House, they were not there. This clearly shows they have defied the whip and invited the provision of the anti-defection law,” he said.

Pointing out that the six Congress MLAs had been disqualified, Mr Pathania said, “I hold and declare the respondents [six Congress MLAs] cease to be members of the Himachal Pradesh State Legislative Assembly with immediate effect.”

For now, the MLAs’ disqualification has closed the chapter for the ruling Congress in Himachal Pradesh after a two-day scare over the BJP returning to power with a no-trust vote, since the six MLAs had voted for the state’s Opposition party in the Rajya Sabha election.

The BJP had deduced the six Congress MLAs no longer trusted the ruling party. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra yesterday questioned whether the BJP, with just 25 MLAs, was working overtime to overthrow the Himachal Pradesh government.

Minus the six disqualified MLAs, the Congress now has 34 MLAs in the 62-member house. Three independent MLAs who supported the Congress also cross-voted for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election. “In democracy, the public has the right to choose the government of their choice. The people of Himachal Pradesh used this right and formed the Congress government with a clear majority. But BJP wants to crush this right of the people by misusing money power, power of agencies and power of the Centre,” Priyanka Gandhi said in a post on the microblogging platform X in Hindi.

The six rebel Congress MLAs, who were issued a show-cause notice for defying the whip had appeared before the Speaker along with their lawyer and argued that they had not been provided all the relevant documents. Senior advocate Satya Pal Jain, who represented the six Congress MLAs before the Speaker, argued that they were only given the notice and the copy of the petition filed on Tuesday evening while other annexures were not supplied to them.

Mr Jain said according to rules, seven days have to be given to the MLAs for filing the reply the copy of the petition is supplied to them. Mr Jain said there are five or six conditions under the anti-defection law, including seven days’ time for reply, which have to be complied with. Even after supplying the copy of the petition, seven days have to be given for filing the reply, he said.

He asserted that the anti-defection law does not apply to voting in Rajya Sabha polls, adding that the Supreme Court has repeatedly said this. “We have urged the Speaker to give at least one week’s time as per the principle of natural justice for filing the reply,” Mr Jain had said.