DW BUREAU / ShimlA

Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania on Monday administered oath to the three newly elected legislators, including Kamlesh Thakur, the wife of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu. The oath ceremony was conducted inside the House in the presence of the chief minister, leader of the opposition, cabinet ministers and other members.

The members who took oath included Congress MLAs Kamlesh Thakur from the Dehra assembly seat, Hardeep Singh Bawa from the Nalagarh seat and BJP legislator Ashish Sharma from the Hamirpur assembly constituency.

With the induction of the three MLAs, the House is complete with 68 members and the strength of Congress has risen to 40 while BJP has 28 members in the legislative assembly. There is no independent MLA in the Vidhan Sabha for the first time in the history of Himachal Pradesh. Also, this is the first time a couple, CM Sukhu and his wife Kamlesh Thakur, are members of the same House.

The by-elections for the three seats -- Dehra, Nalagarh and Hamirpur -- were held on July 10 following the acceptance of the resignation of three independent MLAs, Hoshiyar Singh, K L Thakur and Ashish Sharma.

The three independents along with six Congress rebels had voted in favour of the BJP nominee Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha polls held on February 27.

On March 22, the three independent MLAs submitted their resignation and joined the BJP the next day.

However, their resignation was accepted by the speaker on June 3. The three Independents were given tickets by the BJP from their respective seats but Ashish Sharma was the only MLA to retain his seats while the other two lost the by-polls to Congress rivals.

Talking to the media persons here, CM Sukhu accused the BJP of hatching a conspiracy to destabilise the government by horse-trading.

In his response, leader of opposition Jai Ram Thakur accused the Congress government of winning the by-polls by misusing the official machinery. Sukhu hoped that the BJP would now shun the negative politics and cooperate with the government in pursuing the development agenda. "The people of the state have rejected the politics of toppling the elected government through money power and shown the mirror to the BJP," the chief minister said.

The BJP forced the by-polls and created political turmoil and as a result, the government could not implement a developmental agenda after passing the budget due to implementation of a model code of conduct, he added.

Reiterating the resolve of the state government to make the state self-sufficient, Sukhu said the Congress government was forced to raise loans to pay the interest and instalment of loans taken by the previous BJP government headed by Jai Ram Thakur.
(editor@dailyworld.in)