Shimla, May 16 (Inditop) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was leading in all the four parliamentary constituencies of Himachal Pradesh as counting of votes cast for the Lok Sabha election was underway Saturday, a poll official said.
The counting of votes began at 8 a.m. and the BJP was got majority of the votes counted by 9 a.m.
The hill state’s four seats – Shimla (reserved for Scheduled Castes), Mandi, Hamirpur and Kangra – saw 59.17 percent polling May 13.
The main contest is between the Congress and the BJP. There are 31 candidates, including nine independents, in the fray.
The high-profile Mandi seat is seeing a fight between five-time chief minister Virbhadra Singh (Congress) and Maheshwar Singh (BJP). This constituency saw the maximum voter turnout of 64 percent.
The Congress fielded sitting MPs Dhani Ram Shandil and Chander Kumar in Shimla and Kangra respectively against the BJP’s Virender Kashyap and Rajan Sushant.
In Hamirpur, the Congress has fielded BJP rebel Narinder Thakur against the BJP’s sitting MP Anurag Thakur, the son of Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal.
The Congress had won three seats in the 2004 general elections, while the BJP had one seat.
