SHIMLA: Four months after he was forced to quit the Himachal cabinet, former minister Anil Sharma has been expelled from the BJP).
The BJP has not challenged his membership as party MLA yet. Following the move, Sharma will have a separate seating arrangement during the upcoming monsoon session in the assembly starting from August 19.
Sharma was the power minister in Jai Ram Thakur-led BJP government, but the situation changed dramatically right before the parliamentary elections when his son Aashray Sharma and father Sukh Ram, a former Union minister, joined the Congress. After Congress chose Aashray as its Lok Sabha candidate from Mandi, Sharma made it clear that he would not campaign for BJP candidate in the constituency against his son.
Sharma was forced to resign as the minister while he continued to remain in the BJP. Sources said, the BJP has now made it clear that no one from his family would remain in party. Sharma had contested the 2012 assembly election on Congress ticket and had become a minister in Virbhadra Singh-led government. But he joined the BJP in 2017 right before the assembly