Today in Politics | After Himachal RS poll shocker, buzz grows: Can Congress govt survive Finance Bill day?

The ruling Congress in Himachal Pradesh led by Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhusuffered a major setback Tuesday, when party candidate and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Abhishek Singhvi was defeated in the Rajya Sabha election after six party MLAs cross-voted for the Opposition BJP’s candidate Harsh Mahajan. The BJP went on to claim that the Congress government has lost its majority and demanded the resignation of Sukhu.

Now, all eyes will be on the passage of the Budget that the state Assembly is slated to take up on Wednesday.

In the 68-member House, the Congress has 40 MLAs and claims the support of 3 Independents, while the BJP has 25 MLAs.

Tense scenes were witnessed leading up to the counting on Tuesday night.

Congress MLAs — Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Chaitanya Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Davinder Kumar Bhutto, and Ravi Thakur — as well as the Independent legislators Ashish Sharma, K L Thakur, and Hoshyar Singh voted for Mahajan. Even before the results were declared, these MLAs were allegedly escorted to Panchkula in Haryana. The Congress has claimed these MLAs were “kidnapped”.

Mahajan and Singhvi ended up polling 34 votes each, making way for a draw of slips to resolve the issue. Out of the two slips, the one that was drawn carried Singhvi’s name. As per the norms, he was “excluded”. Mahajan was declared the winner.

With the six Congress MLAs cross-voting, the BJP said the Sukhu government “lost the mandate and trust”. Sukhu dismissed the BJP’s claim.

The Congress central leadership has quickly switched to the crisis mode, deploying its trusted senior leaders D K Shivakumar, the Karnataka Deputy CM, and Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who is the Leader of Opposition in Haryana, as observers to Himachal