Elections are being held in seven phases and with the completion of the third phase, the election process will be completed in southern states.
New Delhi: The third phase of Lok Sabha elections will be held on Tuesday for 117 seats in all the constituencies of Gujarat and Kerala. BJP president Amit Shah, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and other prominent union ministers are in the fray.
Besides the 26 seats in Gujarat and 20 in Kerala, voting will also be held in four seats in Assam, five in Bihar, seven in Chhattisgarh, 14 in Karnataka, 14 in Maharashtra, six in Orissa, 10 in Uttar Pradesh, five in West Bengal, two in Goa and one each in Dadra and Nagar Haveli Daman and Diu and Tripura.
18.56 crore people are eligible for voting in the third phase of Lok Sabha election which is also the largest phase of the 2019 elections.
The polling in Tripura East constituency, which was earlier scheduled for April 18, will be held in this phase, as also in a part of the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat in Jammu and Kashmir, where the election is being held in three phases.
About 18.56 crore voters are eligible for voting in this phase, and the Election Commission has set up 2.10 lakh polling booths/stations and has made elaborate security arrangements.
Elections are being held in seven phases and with the completion of the third phase, the election process will be completed in southern states.
BJP chief Amit Shah, who replaced L K Advani as the party nominee from Gandhinagar, and 370 other candidates are in the fray in the 26 Lok Sabha seats all of which were won by the party in the last election. Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Jaswantsinh Bhabhor is the BJP nominee from Dahod seat.
In Kerala, Rahul Gandhi's decision to contest from Wayanad besides his traditional Amethi seat has added new interest to the fight between rivals UDF and LDF for the 20 seats. The BJP has also aggressively campaigned in the hope of opening its account in the southern state by capitalising on the Sabarimala shrine women entry issue.
Union minister Alphons Kannamthanam is seeking to make his Lok Sabha debut from Ernakulam. Sitting Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is facing a triangular contest in Thiruvananthapuram, where the BJP has fielded former Governor Kummanam Rajasekharan and the CPI C Divakaran.
It is a do-or-die battle for both the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF and the opposition Congress-headed UDF in most of the 20 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP-led NDA is posing a formidable challenge to the two traditional fronts in at least three constituencies -- Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta and Thrissur.
In Karnakata, the battle lines delineated for a bipolar contest between the ruling Congress-JD(S) combine and the BJP.
The BJP that has a significant presence in these constituencies aims to improve its tally banking on what it calls the "Modi wave" and the support of the dominant Lingayat community, considered as its vote base.
It is also a test for Congress-JD(S) coalition government headed by H D Kumaraswamy in the state.
The third phase of polling for 10 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh will decide the electoral fate of four members of the SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav's clan, besides those of senior party leader Azam Khan and film actor and BJP candidate Jaya Prada.
The BJP had won seven out of the ten seats in 2014, while the SP bagged three. Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav and his two nephews Dharmendra Yadav and Akshay Yadav are seeking re-election from Mainpuri, Badaun and Firozabad seats respectively. Mulayam has said this would be his last contest.
Voting will be held in seven Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh, of which the BJP had won six in 2014. The Congress, buoyed by its victory in the Assembly elections last year, is hoping to improve its tally in the state.
In Goa, there are 12 candidates in the fray for the two Lok Sabha constituencies, including Union AYUSH Minister Shripad Naik from North Goa where he is pitted against state Congress chief Girish Chodankar.
In Bihar, close to nine million voters will be deciding the fates of 82 candidates in five Lok Sabha seats of Bihar. Four sitting MPs Ranjeet Ranjan (Supaul), her husband Pappu Yadav (Madhepura), Sarfaraz Alam (Araria) and Mehboob Ali Kaiser (Khagaria) would seek to retain their respective seats.
In the six seats in Odisha, the primary contest in between the state's ruling BJD and the BJP. The BJD had won all the six seats in 2014.
The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, BJP and Congress are the main contenders in the five seats -- Balurghat, Maldaha North, Maldaha South, Jangipur and Murshidabad.
Four seats will see four-cornered contests between the three parties and the Left Front. It will be a three-cornered contest in Maldaha South as no Left party is in the fray in the seat.
In Assam, prominent candidates in the fray are two sitting MPs AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal in Dhubri and Independent Naba Sarania in Kokrajhar, state social welfare minister Pramila Rani Brahma of BPF from Kokrajhar and Congress MLA Abdul Khaleque.
In the Union Territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, the BJP had bagged both seats in the last election.
The Lok Sabha polls are being held in seven-phases for 543 seats, and the counting of votes will be on May 23.
(With inputs from PTI)
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