With the bypolls scheduled for next month, the BJP has announced its candidates for the three Assembly constituencies (ACs) — Nalagarh, Hamirpur and Dehra.

The party has given tickets to former Independent candidates of these ACs, K L Thakur (Nalagarh), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur), and Hoshyar Singh (Dehra), who had joined the BJP the next day after tendering his resignation to state Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania on March 22.

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However, since the Speaker did not accept their resignation, they approached the High Court and also staged a sit-in protest on the state Legislative Assembly premises on March 30.

Two months later, the Speaker accepted their resignation on June 3, after the Lok Sabha polls and the by-elections in the six Assembly constituencies.

They had earlier supported BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha elections held on February 27 along with six of the six Congress rebel MLAs who had cross-voted.

These six rebel Congress MLAs too resigned and joined the BJP and contested the bypolls in these Assembly segments on BJP ticket.

Out of these six, only two — Sudhir Sharma (Dharamshala) and Inderdutt Lakhanpal (Barsar) — won, while Rajinder Rana (Sujanpur), Ravi Thakur (Lahaul-Spiti), Chaitanya Sharma (Gagret), and Devinder Kumar Bhutto (Kutlehar) lost.

Ashish Sharma, who made his debut in electoral politics in 2022, will be re-contesting the bypolls from Hamirpur on a BJP ticket, while two-time MLA K L Thakur will contest from Nalagarh and Hoshyar Singh, who won as an Independent twice, will be fighting on BJP ticket this time.