The Congress on Tuesday announced that Kamlesh Thakur, the wife of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, will contest the Assembly bye-election from Dehra next month.

Bye-elections to Dehra, along with the constituencies of Hamirpur and Nalagarh, will be held in Himachal Pradesh on July 10. The seats fell vacant after the independent legislators representing them resigned on March 22. The legislators, along with six Congress rebels, had voted in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Harsh Mahajan in the February 27 Rajya Sabha election.

The independent legislators – Ashish Sharma, Hoshiyar Singh and KL Thakur – joined the BJP on March 23. The Hindutva party has fielded all three of them for the bye-elections.

While Hoshiyar Singh will contest against Kamlesh Thakur in Dehra, Sharma will be in the fray from Hamirpur and Thakur from Nalagarh, PTI reported.

The Dehra constituency was created in 2010 and the Congress has never won the seat till now. The BJP’s Ravinder Singh Ravi won the seat in 2012, while Hoshiyar Singh won in 2017 and 2022.

Along with the three seats in Himachal Pradesh, bye-elections will also be held on July 10 for one seat in Bihar, four in West Bengal, one in Tamil Nadu, one in Madhya Pradesh, two in Uttarakhand and one in Punjab.