`Governor connived with Congress’

SHIMLA, March 6: The Bharatiya Janata Party today launched a blistering attack against Governor V S Rama Devi for inviting the Congress to f...

SHIMLA, March 6: The Bharatiya Janata Party today launched a blistering attack against Governor V S Rama Devi for inviting the Congress to form the government, knowing that the party lacked `requisite’ strength in the assembly.

BJP secretary Narinder Modi, who is also in charge of Himachal affairs, accused the governor of conniving with the Congress to whisk away an Independent MLA Ramesh Chaudhry.

He alleged the governor had forced the HVC to parade its three MLAS before her, during the night as it would have been very easy for the Congress to “kidnap” the MLAS from the BJP custody.

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Modi claimed that state party president Prem Kumar Dhumal, who is also the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate and HVC leader Sukh Ram have sent a fax to the President of India demanding his intervention in safeguarding the democratic norms.

He claimed that senior BJP leaders at Delhi had also been briefed about the entire drama at Raj Bhawan.

Modi announced that the BJP would launch a state-wide agitation to protest the installation of the Virbhadra Singh government through the backdoor.

At a press conference, Rajan Shushant, newly-elected MLA and a party worker from Una were produced to narrate how they were attacked by the Congress musclemen. They identified them as Ram Lal Thakur, Harsh Mahajan, G S Bali, and Surinder Sethi. Dhumal also produced a BJP worker, Ram Pal Saini, who was allegedly attacked by the Congress worker including the son of former education minister N C Prashar while going to meet former BJP minister Roop Singh Thakur at the PWD rest house this morning.

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SOLAN: The district BJP unit today charged that the district election officer and returning officer had indulged in malpractices on political considerations during the re-counting of votes in Solan constituency here.

Nearly 200 activists of the party lead by M.N. Sofat, who unsuccessfully contested the election from this assembly segment and lost by a slim margin of 26 votes, took out a procession in the town and staged a dharna outside the Deputy Commissioner’s office this afternoon. They also burnt the effigies of DEO and returning officer.

Addressing party workers, Sofat alleged that during the first count, 468 votes were declared invalid while in the third recount 620 votes were declared invalid, of which the maximum number of votes were against the BJP. He charged that his complaint was not entertained and the behaviour of the election officers towards polling agents of the BJP was hostile. Election officers were not available for comments.