Shimla, Dec 8 (PTI) Incumbent MLA and Congress candidate Bhawani Singh Pathania and BJP"s Rakesh Pathania were locked in a neck-and-neck contest in Himachal Pradesh"s Fatehpur assembly seat, trends showed on Thursday.After trailing in the initial rounds, Bhawani Singh took a lead of 456 votes. Vote count in favour of the Congress candidate stood at 14,097 votes, compared to 13,641 votes for Rakesh Pathania.The BJP had shifted Forest Minister Rakesh Pathania from Nurpur, which he has represented three times, to Fatehpur.The vote count in favour of BJP rebel and former Rajya Sabha MP Kripal Parmar was 1,966 votes while former Lok Sabha MP and AAP candidate Rajan Sushant has got only 452 votes so far.The Fatehpur seat hit the limelight during the election campaigning after the Congress released a video of a purported phone call of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Parmar, who fought elections as an independent candidate.The BJP has been losing the seat since 2003, except in 2007 when Rajan Sushant won it on the party ticket. However, two years later, the BJP lost the seat to the Congress in a bypoll held due to the election of Sushant as Lok Sabha member from the Kangra seat in the 2009 general elections.Bhawani Singh had won the seat in the 2021 bypoll following the death of then MLA and his father Sujan Singh Pathania. Sujan Singh won seven terms from the assembly seat, three in a row, including one by-election. PTI MR MR ANB ANB