Nine Congress MLAs likely to get BJP tickets

NEW DELHI: The nine Congress MLAs who crossed over to the BJP in the recent floor test in the Uttarakhand assembly that created a crisis for the Harish Rawat government are likely to get assembly seats from the BJP, highly placed BJP sources indicated.

“Six of the nine seats represented by these rebel Congress MLAs are not traditional BJP strongholds. In fact, they stand a better chance to win from these seats as against any other BJP candidate in these places,” confided a senior BJP leader regarding party’s political calculations behind their induction into party fold.

The leadership’s reward for the nine rebel Congress MLAs flies in the face of BJP’s public claim that their crossover was “unconditional.” The party’s state unit chief Ajay Bhatt had emphasised that the rebel Congressmen joined the party unconditionally at the time of their induction to avoid a backlash from party’s local units.

Party leaders, however, justified the move as stemming from a cold political calculation where an every-seatcounts strategy will be applied to wrest Uttarakhand back from the Congress. BJP lost to Congress in 2012 assembly elections by a single seat, while Congress won 32 seats in the 70-member Uttarakhand assembly.

BJP is hoping that the political strength of rebel Congress MLAs in their home constituencies would be able to overcome the popular disapproval of their defection to the BJP in the recent imbroglio.