February 29, 2024: The Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania on Thursday disqualified the six Congress MLAs who cross voted in the Rajya Sabha polls.

The six MLAs who have been disqualified are Sudhir Sharma, Rajinder Rana, Davinder K Bhutto, Ravi Thakur, Chaitanya Sharma and Inder Dutt Lakhanpal.

The speaker said, "Six MLAs, who contested on Congress symbol, attracted provisions of anti-defection law against themselves...I declare that the six people cease to be members of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly with immediate effect."

The petition was filed by Congress MLA and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Harsh Wardhan Chauhan under the anti-defection law for disqualification of the six MLAs.

As per sources, after the 2022 Assembly elections, the Congress had 40 MLAs, while the BJP had 25 in the 68-member state assembly. The remaining three seats are held by independents. With the six rebel MLAs disqualified the strength of the house comes down from 68 to 62 and the halfway mark is 32. With the loss of 6 MLAs the Congress now has 34 MLAs and the BJP with independents has 28.