In a significant political development, six former Himachal Pradesh Congress MLAs who were disqualified as the grand old party’s legislators and three independent MLAs from the state joined the BJP at the party headquarters here on Saturday.

The six disqualified Congress legislators had supported the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election, apart from the three Independent legislators.

The six former Congress MLAs of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly were disqualified for defying a party whip.

Four-time MLA Sudhir Sharma (Dharamshala constituency), three-time MLA Ravi Thakur (Lahaul-Spiti), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal (Barsar), first-time MLA Devendra Bhutto (Kutlehar), Rajendra Rana (Sujanpur), and first-time MLA Chaitanya Sharma (Gagret), joined the BJP at the party headquarters here in the presence of Himachal Pradesh BJP president Rajiv Bindal, former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur and Union Minister Anurag Thakur.

Three Independent MLAs from Himachal Pradesh–Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur constituency), Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra) and KL Thakur (Nalagarh)–who voted in favour of a BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections last month joined the BJP at the party headquarters here.

Addressing the press conference, Union Minister Anurag Thakur welcomed all six MLAs who joined the BJP today in Delhi.

“I welcome all the leaders who today joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. Bharatiya Janata Party is not only the largest party in the world and we are fortunate to be working under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The way the country is moving ahead under PM Modi’s leadership is remarkable. The people have faith in PM Modi’s guarantees. After you (six MLAs) join the BJP, we will become stronger and have more power,” Thakur said.

Union Minister Anurag Thakur said that the BJP will become stronger in Himachal Pradesh.

“The state government formed by the Congress party in the state by making false promises, was a big lie. The people are not happy in Himachal and that was seen in the Rajya Sabha elections,” he added.

Jai Ram Thakur said that ”we will keep moving forward to strengthen the party under the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

“Our aim is to make the BJP stronger and Prime Minister Narendra Modi stronger. The newly joined BJP MLAs were not respected by the Congress party. The positions they deserved in Congress were not given to them. We want to assure you that you will be given all respect in the party,” the former Himachal Pradesh chief minister said.

After joining BJP, rebel Himachal MLA Davinder Kumar Bhutto said that they had left Congress and joined the BJP so that “we could aid in the development of our state under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi”.

“We have left Congress and joined the BJP so that we could aid in the development of our state under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi. We do not want any post, we have joined as party workers… Congress ignores its party workers and elected members. The Himachal government will definitely collapse soon,” he added.

Himachal Pradesh MLA Ravi Thakur said that 90 per cent of the total budget of Himachal Pradesh comes from the Centre.

“Ninety per cent of the total budget of Himachal Pradesh comes from the Centre. This is why I voted for Harsh Mahajan, keeping my constituency of Lahaul-Spiti in mind… It was unfortunate that the speaker of the assembly suspended us without any reason… When we came to Delhi to fight our case in the SC, Harsh Mahajan provided us with a lawyer but Abhishek Manu Singhvi came to fight the case with 21 lawyers,” MLA Ravi Thakur said.

Soon after joining BJP, rebel Himachal MLA Inder Dutt Lakhanpa said that the functionality of the INC has been broken.

“Neither is there any influence of the High Command nor is there any respect left for the party workers… They nominated that person for the Rajya Sabha from Himachal, who is known to have fought against the rights of our state in the SC,” he added.

Himachal Pradesh has four Lok Sabha seats — Hamirpur, Mandi, Shimla, and Kangra. The BJP had won all four seats in 2019.

The elections to the four Lok Sabha seats of Himachal Pradesh and bypolls to the six assembly constituencies that fell vacant with the disqualification of six rebel Congress MLAs will be held on June 1.