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The Congress has nominated Anuradha Rana and Subhash Chand as its Lahaul-Spiti (reserved) and Barsar candidates, respectively, for the June 1 assembly byelections in Himachal Pradesh.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge approved the names after chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu met central party leaders in New Delhi on Sunday evening. The party ticket for Dharamshala is yet to be finalised.
While Anuradha Rana is a zila parishad chairperson, Chand had been a panchayat pradhan and member of the block development committee.
In April, the Congress announced the candidatures of Capt Ranjit Singh Rana from the Sujanpur constituency, Rakesh Kalia from Gagret and Vivek Sharma from Kutlehar.
Byelections in the six assembly constituencies of the hill state were necessitated following the disqualification of six rebel Congress MLAs who cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha election in favour of the BJP candidate on February 27. The six disqualified MLAs joined the BJP and they were announced as its candidates in the byelections.
The BJP has fielded Sudhir Sharma from Dharamshala, Ravi Thakur from Lahaul and Spiti, Rajinder Rana from Sujanpur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal from Barsar, Chetanya Sharma from Gagret, and Devinder Kumar Bhutto from Kutlehar.
The rebel Congress MLAs approached the Supreme Court against their disqualification. The Speaker disqualified them due to their absence from the assembly when the state budget and the finance Bill were being put to vote, defying a party whip to vote in favour of the government.
In the 68-member assembly, the majority figure is 35. The ruling Congress had 40 MLAs, but with the disqualification of six MLAs, its number fell to 34.
