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.