HP polls: Congress' Bhawani Singh defeats forest minister Rakesh Pathania to retain Fatehpur seat

Incumbent Congress MLA Bhawani Singh won the Himachal Pradesh's Fatehpur seat by defeating his nearest rival forest minister Rakesh Pathania with a margin of 7,354 votes. The contest for Fatehpur was keenly watched as Pathania, who has won three times from Nurpur assembly seat, was shifted to the constituency.

Singh got 32,452 votes while Pathania received 25,462 votes, according to Election Commission data.

BJP rebel and former Rajya Sabha MP Kripal Singh Parmar, who fought as an independent, received 2,786 votes. Rajan Sushant of AAP polled 1,210 votes.

The Fatehpur seat hit the limelight during the election campaigning after the Congress released a video of a purported phone call of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Parmar.

The BJP has been losing the seat since 2003, except in 2007 when Rajan Sushant won it on the party ticket. However, two years later, the BJP lost the seat to the Congress in a bypoll held due to the election of Sushant as Lok Sabha member from the Kangra seat in the 2009 general elections.

Bhawani Singh had won the seat in the 2021 bypoll following the death of then MLA and his father Sujan Singh Pathania. Sujan Singh won seven terms from the assembly seat, three in a row, including one by-election.