Shimla: Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut has become only the fourth woman ever to be elected to 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, scion of Rampur state and the incumbent state public works 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 and hailing from the erstwhile royal family of Kapurthala, was elected to Lok Sabha from the Mandi constituency in 1952. Chandresh Kumari from the erstwhile royal family of Jodhpur, who was married in Himachal, won from Kangra seat in 1984. State Congress chief Pratibha Singh, who belongs to the erstwhile royal family of Rampur, won from the Mandi seat in 2004, 2013 and 2021.
Kangana is only the third woman to be elected from the Mandi seat. The scions of the erstwhile princely states have won from Mandi 13 out of 19 times but this time the people voted for Bollywood 'Queen' film fame actor Kangana, who also became the first celebrity to contest and win elections in the state. One out of three women in the fray for the Lok Sabha seats have won this time. The women voter turnout exceeded the men in three out of the four Parliament constituencies of Kangra, Mandi and Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh, according to the state election department.
The BJP won all the 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. A total of three women candidates contested the Lok Sabha elections. Besides Kangana of the BJP, they included Rakhee Gupta (Independent) from Mandi Parliament seat and Rekha Chaudhary (BSP) from the Kangra seat.
Women were the focus of election campaigns of the two major political parties, the BJP and the Congress, in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls and while the Congress promised Rs 8,500 per month, the BJP asked about the status of Rs 1,500 per month to women in Himachal as promised by the Congress in last assembly polls.
In the Mandi parliament constituency, the women polled 5,03,173 as compared to men who polled 4,94,657 votes, according to the election department. In the Hamirpur constituency, the women turnout was 5,38,886 as compared to 4,86,338 of men while in Kangra, the women voters polled 5,31,434 in comparison to 4,88,589 votes polled by men.
