Assembly bypolls: Congress ahead in four out of six seats in Himachal

Shimla: Congress candidates are ahead in four assembly bypoll seats in Himachal Pradesh, while two of the six Congress rebels who are now BJP candidates are leading from their respective seats, as per Election Commission trends.

All six seats in the state are seeing a close contest, according to EC trends.

BJP candidates from Kutlehar and Gagret, Davinder Bhutto and Chaitanya Sharma, are trailing by 4,272 votes and 7,970 votes, respectively.

Congress candidate from Lahaul and Spiti seat, Anuradha Rana, is leading by 1,786 votes after the last round (14) of counting even though official declaration of the result is awaited.

BJP leader Rajinder Rana, who had defeated former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal in the 2017 assembly polls, is trailing from Sujanpur seat by 2,174 votes.

BJP's Sudhir Sharma, a former minister, is ahead by 3,115 votes in Dharamshala, while his party candidate from Barsar, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, is leading by 2,441 votes.

The bypolls were held on June 1, simultaneously with elections to the four Lok Sabha seats.

The assembly constituencies where bypolls were held are Sujanpur, Dharamshala, Lahaul & Spiti, Barsar, Gagret and Kutlehar.

Six assembly seats fell vacant following disqualification of Congress rebels for defying the whip to vote in favour of the Congress's state government during the budget.

The six rebel legislators voted for the BJP in Rajya Sabha polls on February 29, later joined BJP and are now contesting on the BJP ticket from their respective assembly segments.

Rajinder Rana (Sujanpur), Sudhir Sharma (Dharamshala), Ravi Thakur (Lahaul and Spiti), Inder Dutt Lakhanpal (Barsar), Chetanya Sharma (Gagret) and Devinder Kumar Bhutto (Kutlehar) had voted in favour of BJP's Rajya Sabha nominee Harsh Mahajan on February 27 along with three Independents.