Kangana Ranaut becomes 4th Himachal woman to be elected to Lok Sabha
Shimla, June 5
Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut has become only the fourth woman ever to be elected to the Lok Sabha from Himachal Pradesh, and the first woman, who is not from an erstwhile royal family.
BJP’s Kangana defeated her Congress rival Vikramaditya Singh, a scion of Rampur princely state and incumbent Public Works Department Minister, by a margin of 74,755 votes from the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency.
Earlier, Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur, the first Health Minister of the country who hailed from the erstwhile royal family of Kapurthala, was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Mandi constituency in 1952. Chandresh Kumari from the erstwhile royal family of Jodhpur, who was married in Himachal, won the Kangra seat in 1984.
State Congress president Pratibha Singh, who belongs to the erstwhile royal family of Rampur, had won the Mandi seat in the 2004, 2013 and 2021 elections. Kangana is only the third woman to be elected from the Mandi seat.
The members of the erstwhile princely states have won from Mandi 13 out of 19 times but this time, people voted for Kangana. The women voter turnout exceeded the men voters in three out of the four parliamentary constituencies of Kangra, Mandi and Hamirpur, according to the Election Department.
The BJP won all four Lok Sabha seats, including Shimla, in the state. The total number of electorates in the state is 57,11, 969 including 29,13,075 males, 27,98,859 females and 35 third gender voters. The election was held simultaneously on June 1 and results were declared on June 4.
Three women candidates contested the LS elections this term. Besides Kangana of the BJP, Independent candidate Rakhee Gupta from the Mandi seat and Rekha Chaudhary of the BSP from the Kangra seat contested the elections.
Women were the focus of the campaigns of both parties. While the Congress promised Rs 8,500 per month, the BJP asked about the status of Rs 1,500 per month assistance promised to women in the state by the Congress.
