NEW DELHI: A total of 11 MLAs, including six rebel Congress legislators who were suspended from the party for cross-voting for BJP nominee Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha polls, arrived in BJP-ruled Uttarakhand on Saturday.
Amid the ongoing crisis within the Congress Party in the state, a bus carrying the legislators arrived in Rishikesh’s Taj Hotel and the 11 MLAs, including six rebel rebel congress MLAs and three independent MLAs, were seen entering the hotel under heavy security.

The 11 MLAs landed at Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun on Friday at around 2:40 PM, from where they left in a car towards the hotel in Rishikesh.

The development comes two days after chief minister Sukhu met the Congress top brass in Delhi and gave a report about the current political situation in the state.

“Some MLAs are sad. They have been kept under CRPF security. Is this how democracy will remain strong? Horsetrading weakens the democracy,” Himachal Pradesh chief minister Sikhvinder Singh Sukhu said on Friday.
“I have just come to know through social media that they (rebel MLAs) were taken away from the hotel in Panchkula and a charter plane flew from Chandigarh airport. I don’t know where it will land. This is because their family members were putting pressure on them to return,” Sukhu added.

Disqualified by Himachal assembly speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania, the six Congress members – Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devinder Kumar Bhutoo, Ravi Thakur and Chetanya Sharma – were ousted after they abstained from voting on the budget soon after they had cross-voted against their party candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rahya Sabha polls. The three independent lawmakers – Hoshyar Singh, K L Thakur and Ashish Sharma – had also sided with the BJP nominee in the February 27 elections.