Shimla, March 14 Amid tight security, 31 Haryana Congress MLAs staying at two resorts in Kufri, near Shimla, visited the nearby tourist destination of Chail on Saturday.
In an attempt to keep its members united, the Congress moved its Haryana MLAs to Himachal Pradesh ahead of the polling for two Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana on March 16.
The MLAs were brought to Kufri in three small buses escorted by a motorcade on Friday evening, and up to 37 rooms have been booked for them.
Given concerns over influencing and cross-voting ahead of the polls, security has been tightened around the legislators.
Police have been deployed at a spot on the national Highway (Shimla-Kinnaur road) from where the diversion goes to the resort where the MLAs are staying. The media personnel have also been kept 200 metres away from the resort.
Bringing Congress MLAs from Haryana to Shimla and placing them under house arrest in a luxury hotel ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections is an abduction of democracy, said Leader of the Opposition in Himachal and former state chief minister Jairam Thakur while speaking to the media in Dharamshala on Saturday.
Mobile phones of the MLAs have been switched off, and they are confined within a "human chain" and not allowed to step outside, he alleged, adding that Congress has lost faith in its own legislators.
Claiming that the MLAs have been accorded the status of state guests with arrangements for accommodation in a hotel and a convoy of vehicles, he said that on one hand, the state government cries crisis, and on the other, indulges in lavish hospitality.
Two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana are falling vacant, as BJP members Kiran Choudhry and Ram Chander Jangra are completing 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.
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. Polling will be held on March 16 between 9 am and 4 pm, and votes will be counted on the same day from 5 pm. Besides Congress, the ruling BJP has 48 MLAs, the INLD has two MLAs and three legislators are Independents in the 90-member Assembly.