The HP High Court has issued a notice to the Speaker of the Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha Kuldeep Singh Pathania on the petition filed by three Independent MLAs seeking the Court’s intervention for accepting their resignations by the Speaker.
A Division Bench of the High Court headed by Chief Justice MS Ramachandra Rao and Justice Ajay Mohan Goel on Thursday directed the respondents to file their replies by April 24.
The three Independent MLAs – Hoshiyar Singh elected from Dehra, KL Thakur elected from Nalagarh and Ashish Sharma elected from Hamirpur had tendered their resignations from HP Vidhan Sabha on March 22 and later joined BJP.
While the Speaker has not officially accepted their resignations till now, they have met HP Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla pressing acceptance of their resignations and now moved the High Court for issuing directions to the Speaker in this regard.
The three Independent MLAs want announcement of by-elections in their constituencies along with already announced six by-elections after disqualification of six rebel Congress MLAs ( now BJP candidates), on June I along with Lok Sabha election in Himachal Pradesh .
The notification for LoK Sabha and by- election in six Assembly constituencies will be issued on May 7 and the three Independent MLAs want acceptance of their resignations before the notification date for simultaneous elections in their Assembly constituencies too .