Himachal Bypoll Results: Counting for all four seats began this morning (File)
The BJP is ahead in just one of three Himachal Pradesh Assembly seats that went for bypolls last week, and is neck-and-neck with the Congress in the race for the single Lok Sabha seat up for grabs.
The Congress is comfortably ahead in the race for the other two Assembly seats.
The lead for the Mandi Lok Sabha seat is swinging back and forth between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress. The BJP has fielded Kargil war hero Brigadier (retd) Khushal Chand Thakur and the Congress Pratibha Singh, who is the wife of the late former six-time Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh.
At 11.50 am, Pratibha Singh had around 3.05 lakh votes to Chand Thakur's 2.99 lakh.
The Mandi seat was previously held by the BJP and the bypoll triggered after the death of MP Ram Swaroop Sharma in March. The Congress had lost this seat by over four lakh votes in 2019.
The BJP's Baldev Thakur is narrowly ahead in the race for the Fatehpur Vidhan Sabha seat, where nine of 24 rounds of counting have been completed, according to the Election Commission's website.
The Congress has fielded Bhawani Singh Pathania from here.
Fatehpur has been a Congress stronghold for over a decade. The bypoll here was needed because of the death of party MLA and former minister Sujan Singh Pathania, who died in February.
The Congress, meanwhile, is ahead in the Arki Assembly seat, where Sanjay Awasthy has a sizeable lead over the BJP's Rattan Singh Pal. 10 of 26 rounds of counting have been completed so far.
The bypoll here was needed because of the death of veteran Congress leader Virbhadra Singh.
The Congress is also ahead in the race for the Jubbal-Kotkhai Assembly seat, where Rohit Thakur has pulled into a strong lead over independent candidate Chetan Singh Bragta, who started strongly.
The BJP's Neelam Seraik is a poor and distant third after 19 of 23 rounds of counting.
The bypoll for this seat (called the 'apple heartland of Himachal Pradesh') was necessitated because sitting BJP MLA Narinder Bragta died in June.
Last week bypolls were held for three Lok Sabha seats (the other two are in Madhya Pradesh and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli) and 29 Assembly constituencies.
