After Lata Thakur, who had won the Assembly election on a Congress ticket in 1972 and had later died in 1976 in a road accident, no party fielded a woman candidate in the Assembly polls all these years.

A triangular contest awaits the by-poll in the tribal Lahaul & Spiti Assembly segment in Himachal Pradesh, where a woman nominee is challenging the male bastion after a gap of 52 years.