Resignations not yet accepted, three Ind MLAs to move court

Pratibha Chauhan

Shimla, March 30

Three Independent MLAs —Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), KL Thakur (Nalagarh) and Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) — sat on dharna outside the Vidhan Sabha today to demand early acceptance of their resignations.

The three MLAs arrived in the Vidhan Sabha and sat there holding placards. “We have resigned from the Assembly on our own free will and without any pressure. We handed over our resignations personally to the Speaker, Kuldeep Singh Pathania, so that he could accept them at the earliest,” the placards read. The Speaker has summoned the MLAs on April 10 but they said they would soon move court against the delay on the part of the Speaker to accept their resignations.

Hoshiyar Singh said, “Being Independent MLAs, we are free to vote for anyone in the Rajya Sabha elections. We are not bound by any political party, so we voted for Harsh Mahajan, who is a Himachali. We have been issued notices stating that there are complaints that we have resigned under duress.”

He said, “We resigned from the House on March 22 and joined the BJP the next day. Despite repeated requests and emails, the Speaker has not accepted our resignations.” He added that the Speaker’s post was a constitutional one and issuing such notices amounted to the murder of democracy.

The Dehra MLA said that even their genuine works had not been done and extra-constitutional authorities were calling the shots. He added that Chief Minister Sukhvinder Sukhu had humiliated them and refused to meet them for months together.

KL Thakur said, “The Speaker is from a particular party but when he sits on the chair, he must act in a fair and impartial manner. We resigned from the House in the interest of our constituencies as neither jobs have been given nor development works have been done.”

Ashish said, “In a democracy, it is people who decide who is right or wrong. If we have done anything wrong, people will reject us in the elections. It is wrong to allege that the disqualified Congress MLAs or the Independent MLAs had accepted money from the BJP to cross-vote. It was basically a fight for self-esteem, which was getting compromised under the Chief Minister.”