Shimla, March 15 A day before the Rajya Sabha elections, 31 Haryana Congress MLAs, who were staying at two resorts near Shimla, left for an undisclosed destination amid tight security and through the rain and hail that lashed the state capital and adjoining areas on Sunday evening.
The Congress MLAs left Kufri around 4:20 pm in three small buses in a heavily guarded motorcade.
Polling for the Rajya Sabha elections will be held between 9 am and 4 pm on March 16. Votes will be counted from 5 pm the same day.
Amid concerns over influencing and cross-voting, the Congress had moved its Haryana MLAs to Kufri in the suburbs of Shimla on Friday.
Thirty-seven rooms were booked in two hotels to house these MLAs and the people accompanying them. Only the hotel staff and Congress leaders were allowed inside, while the media was kept at a distance.
While Leader of Opposition in Himachal Pradesh Assembly Jairam Thakur had stated that bringing Haryana Congress MLAs to Shimla and "placing them under house arrest in a luxury hotel" ahead of the election was "kidnapping democracy", Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has so far refrained from commenting.
Thakur said the mobile phones of these MLAs were switched off. They were confined inside a "human chain" and not allowed to step outside, he alleged, commenting that Congress has lost faith in its own legislators.
Two Rajya Sabha seats would fall vacant in Haryana as BJP members Kiran Choudhry and Ram Chander Jangra are set to complete their terms on April 9.
BJP's Sanjay Bhatia, Congress's Karamvir Singh Boudh and BJP-backed Independent candidate Satish Nandal are in the fray for those seats, with each candidate requiring 31 votes to make it to the upper house.
The Congress, with 37 members in the Haryana Assembly, has the required strength to help its candidate win a seat. The prospects, however, could be in jeopardy in case of cross-voting.
The ruling BJP has 48 MLAs, the Indian National Lok Dal has two MLAs, and three legislators are Independents in the 90-member Assembly.