The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded all six disqualified MLAs, who left Congress to join it, in the Himachal Pradesh assembly bypolls.

The six disqualified ex-Congress legislators, along with three Independents who quit their seats, joined the BJP in New Delhi on Saturday.

The disqualified MLAs – Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Rajinder Rana, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chetanya Sharma and Devinder Kumar Bhutto – joined the BJP in the presence of Union minister and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur, former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, its national general secretary Arun Singh and state unit president Rajeev Bindal.

The BJP has fielded Sudhir Sharma from Dharamshala, Ravi Thakur from Lahaul & Spiti, Rajinder Rana from Sujanpur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal from Barsar, Chaitanya Sharma from Gagret and Devinder Kumar Bhutto from Kutlehar.

The bypolls for these six seats will be held on June 1, on the day four Lok Sabha constituencies of the hill states are going to vote in the seventh phase of the general elections.

They were all disqualified on February 29 for defying the Congress party’s whip to be present in the House and vote in favour of the state government during a cut motion and budget.

BJP leaders had cited a host of development measures taken by the Central government for the state, including highway and rail projects, and said the former MLAs had decided to strengthen the Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi’s leadership.

Jai Ram Thakur had described the six former Congress MLAs’ joining the BJP as a big political development for such a small state, noting that several of these leaders had held senior positions within the party.

Last month, the Congress government faced a political crisis after the BJP won the Rajya Sabha election for the state’s lone seat due to the support of the nine MLAs. Though Sukhu has been putting up a brave face and there appears to be no immediate threat to his government, the BJP is looking to bring down his dispensation with bypoll wins amid a view that it may draw more legislators of the ruling party into its fold.

With the disqualification of the six Congress MLAs, the strength of the ruling party came down from 39 to 33 in the now 62-member assembly. Its original strength is 68. The BJP has 25 members. The Speaker, who can vote only in the case of a tie during a floor test, is affiliated to the Congress.

The resignations of the three Independent MLAs have further reduced the assembly’s strength.