Closely knit, but separated on political lines in Himachal!

They are joined by family ties, but separated on political lines, pitted them against each other in the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections where only one of them could win

BJP candidate Rajesh Kashyap, a doctor-turned-politician who joined the party just a few days before the polls were announced, was defeated from his father-in-law and Congress candidate Dhani Ram Shandil, a cabinet Minister in outgoing government.

Shandil, the sitting legislator from Solan town, defeated Kashyap by a thin margin of 671 votes.

The BJP candidate took premature retirement from a government job and opted to plunge into politics. During the elections, both rarely traded personal barbs but stressed on the development agenda, a political observer told IANS.

Congress' Anirudh Singh defeated his aunt and BJP candidate Vijay Jyoti Sen from Kasumpti. She is the sister-in-law of Congress veteran and six-time Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. Both are related to Kuldeep Tanwar, the Communist Party of India-Marxist candidate in the constituency.

Anirudh Singh retained his seat by defeating his aunt by a big margin of 9,397 votes. Both belong to the erstwhile royal families of the state.

While Anirudh Singh polled 22,061 votes and Jyoti Sen got 12,664, their cousin Tanwar, who is also the state president of the Kisan Sabha, got just 4,698 votes.

Making his political debut, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh's son Vikramaditya Singh won from Shimla (Rural), the seat his father won in the last assembly elections, defeating BJP's Pramod Sharma, a professor in Himachal Pradesh University here and once known to be close to his father.

--IANS

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