Vikramaditya Singh, the Congress MLA who fomented a rebellion against the Congress government in Himachal Pradesh, will be fighting against BJP’s Kangana Ranaut in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi. The Congress on Saturday announced the names of 16 candidates for the Lok Sabha election 2024. Himachal Pradesh’s former chief minister Virbhadra Singh’s son 35-year-old Vikramaditya will be replacing his mother – sitting MP Pratibha Singh — as a candidate from the constituency.

Manish Tewari will be contesting from Chandigarh against BJP’s Sanjay Tandon who replaced sitting MP Kirron Kher.

The other names announced on Saturday were Ramji Thakor from Mahesana, Himmatsinh Patel from Ahmedabad East, Pareshbhai Dhanani from Rajkot, Naishadh Desai from Navasari, Vinod Sultanpuri from Shimla, Mohan Hembram from Keonjhar, Shrikant Kumar Jena from Balasore, Anant Prasad Sethi from Bhadrak, Anchal Das from Jajpur, Sashmita Behera from Dhenkanal, Sidharth Swarup Das from Kendrapara, Rabindra Kumar Sethy from Jagatsinghpur, Sucharita Mohanty from puri and Yasir Nawa from Bhubaneswar.

It’s Vikramaditya Singh versus Kangana Ranaut from Mandi

Even before Vikramaditya’s name was announced, the Mandi fight hotted up with Kangana Ranaut calling Vikramaditya ‘chhota pappu’. Vikramaditya reacted to the moniker and said he would pray to Lord Ram to give the actor some “good sense”.

“We respect our elder sister Kangana Ranaut. Today she was addressing the people of Manali. Instead of speaking against Congress party and its leaders, it would have been good, if she would have taken up and talked about the issues on the biggest disaster of the century, which happened in Manali a few months ago,” Vikramaditya said.

Before this, Vikramaditya called Kangana the queen of controversy and that she knew nothing about Himachal. “Yeh tumhare baap-dada ki riyasat nahin hai, ke tum mujhe dara, dhamka ke vapis bhej doge (This is not the estate of your father or grandfather that you will threaten me and send me back). This is the new Bharat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where a small, poor boy who used to sell tea is the biggest hero and “pradhan sevak” of the people,” Kangana said.

Himachal Pradesh has four Lok Sabha seats. The polling on these four seats, along with six Assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh that fell vacant following the disqualification of Congress MLAs will be held on June 1. The BJP won all four seats in 2019. The counting will be done on June 4.