Congress leader Vikramaditya Singh retained his Shimla Rural seat with a comfortable margin of more than 13,000 votes, as his party was headed for a win in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh getting the better of the ruling BJP.
Singh beat his nearest rival Bharatiya Janata Party's Ravi Mehta, who got 19,654 votes.
The Shimla Rural segment was carved out during the delimitation exercise of 2007 and Singh took over as its representative that year from his father Virbhadra Singh, a six–time chief minister who died on July 8, 2021.
In the 2017 assembly elections, when Congress was voted out of power, Vikramaditya Singh had won the Shim Rural seat with a margin of over 4,800 votes, securing 28,275 votes, while his rival Pramod Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got 23,395 votes.
In the run-up to assembly polls this year, Vikramaditya Singh’s poll campaign revolved around an array of issues including creating jobs for youngsters in the hill state.
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Vikramaditya Singh joined the Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) in 2013 and served as the president of the State Youth Congress Committee. A graduate from Delhi University’s Hansraj College, he is the current general secretary of the party’s state unit. His term as president of the state Youth Congress provided him experience under shadows of party’s veteran leaders in Himachal Pradesh.
Political observers say Vikramaditya Singh has had to bear the pressure of taking his father’s legacy forward, even given that his is a family with a strong political tilt.
His mother Pratibha Singh is the current state president of the HPCC. She hails from the erstwhile Keonthal royal family and has been active in politics since 2005. She is a three-time member of Parliament and viewed as a chief ministerial candidate as well.
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