Days ahead of Assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh, the ruling BJP on Monday suspended five of its rebel leaders from the primary membership of the party for contesting the election as Independents.
Those suspended include former MLAs—Tejwant Singh Negi (Kinnaur), Kishori Lal (Anni), Manohar Dhiman (Indora), K.L. Thakur (Nalagarh)—and the BJP's Himachal unit vice-president Kripal Parmar.
All these leaders are contesting the polls as Independents from their respective constituencies after the BJP denied ticket to them.
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Mr. Parmar, a former Rajya Sabha MP, is contesting as an Independent from Fatehpur constituency.
"BJP's state unit president Suresh Kashyap has suspended the workers from the primary membership of the party for six years for contesting the elections as Independents against the party's official candidate," the statement reads.
Earlier, more than a dozen BJP leaders had announced that they would be contesting as Independents in the Assembly elections scheduled to be held on November 12.
However, after the intervention of BJP's top brass, some of the leaders, including former MP Maheshwar Singh, Yuvraj Kapoor and Dharamshala block president Anil Chaudhary, withdrew their nominations.
In its first list of candidates, the BJP had denied tickets to its 11 sitting MLAs and shifted the constituencies of two ministers.
