HP Assembly bye-elections: Congress announces candidates for Lahaul-Spiti, Barsar

According to the AICC press release, Anuradha Rana is the Congress candidate for the Lahaul-Spiti, which is reserved for ST candidates, and Subhash Chand is the candidate for the Barsar constituency.

Assembly bye-elections in the state are necessitated because of the disqualification of six rebel Congress MLAs, who cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha election in favour of the BJP.

After Sunday's announcement of two more candidates, the Congress has announced candidates for five out of six constituencies, where bye-elections are due on June 1.

In April, Congress announced Capt. Ranjit Singh Rana from the Sujanpur constituency, Rakesh Kalia from Gagret and Vivek Sharma from Kutlehar.

The six disqualified MLAs joined the BJP and they were announced as its candidates in these bye-elections by the party. The BJP candidates are Sudhir Sharma for Dharamshala, Ravi Thakur for Lahaul and Spiti, Rajinder Rana for Sujanpur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal for Barsar, Chetanya Sharma for Gagret, and Devinder Kumar Bhutto for Kutlehar.

The elections to the four Lok Sabha seats of Himachal Pradesh and by-polls to the six assembly constituencies that fell vacant with the disqualification of six rebel Congress MLAs and their eventual switch to the BJP will be held on June.

Six Congress legislators were disqualified from the State Legislative Assembly in February. They cross-voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election on February 27. The rebel Congress MLAs have approached the Supreme Court against their disqualification. The ground for their disqualification was their absence from the Assembly when the State Budget and the Finance Bill were being put to the vote, defying a party whip to vote in favour of the government.

In the 68-member Assembly, the majority figure is 35. The ruling Congress had 40 MLAs, but with the disqualification of six MLAs, the Congress' number fell to 34. (ANI)