June 1's voting will mark the end of the marathon polling process that began on 19 April and has already covered 486 Lok Sabha seats.
Representative image of people voting (ECISVEEP/ X)
Fifty-seven seats across seven states and the Union territory of Chandigarh will go to polls in the seventh and final phase of Lok Sabha elections on Saturday, June 1 and it includes Varanasi, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third consecutive term.
Polling is scheduled in all 13 seats of Punjab and four of Himachal Pradesh, 13 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight in Bihar, six in Odisha and three seats in Jharkhand besides Chandigarh. Polling for the remaining 42 Assembly constituencies of Odisha and by-polls to six assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh will also take place simultaneously.
Other prominent candidates among the total 904 contestants in the fray are Union minister Anurag Thakur, Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee, Lalu Prasad’s daughter Misa Bharti and actor Kangana Ranaut.
Over 10.06 crore citizens, including nearly 5.24 crore men, 4.82 crore women and 3,574 third-gender electors are eligible to vote in this phase.
June 1’s voting will mark the end of the marathon polling process that began on 19 April and has already covered 486 Lok Sabha seats in 28 states and Union Territories. The assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim also went to polls. The counting of votes will be taken up on 4 June. In Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the counting for the Assembly polls will be on 2 June.
According to Election Commission guidelines, television channels and news outlets will be able to run exit poll data and its results on 1 June after 6.30 pm.
The EC said polling parties have been dispatched along with machines and poll materials to their respective polling stations. At the 1.09 lakh polling stations, basic facilities including ample shade, drinking water, ramps, and toilets are being provided to ensure that polling takes place in a comfortable and secure environment, it said. The poll panel has also directed CEOs and state machinery to take adequate measures to manage the adverse impact of hot weather or rainfall wherever predicted.
The commission called upon voters to turn out in greater numbers and vote with responsibility and pride. The turnout in the first six phases was 66.14 per cent, 66.71, 65.68, 69.16, 62.2 and 63.36 percent respectively.
The campaigning for the last phase, which ended on 30 May in the evening, saw BJP leaders led by Modi accusing the Congress and the INDIA alliance of being corrupt, anti-Hindu and engaging in loot, appeasement and dynastic politics.
The Opposition parties have been claiming that the BJP is anti-farmer, anti-youth and will change and scrap the Constitution if they win the elections.
On Thursday evening, Modi headed to Kanyakumari where he is meditating till 1 June at the site associated with Swami Vivekananda. Modi had 206 public outreach programmes, including rallies and roadshows, since the Election Commission announced the Lok Sabha election schedule on 16 March.
The parliamentary seats where polling will take place in Uttar Pradesh are Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon (SC), Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Robertsganj (SC), spread across 11 districts.
Uttar Pradesh is seeing a direct contest between the BJP-led NDA and the coalition of INDIA bloc members Samajwadi Party and Congress.
From Chandauli, Maharajganj and Mirzapur, Union ministers Mahendra Nath Pandey, Pankaj Chaudhary and Anupriya Patel respectively are contesting. Late Mukhtar Ansari’s brother Afzal Ansari is in the fray from Ghazipur and former PM Chandrashekhar’s son Neeraj Shekhar is contesting from Ballia.
In Varanasi, those contesting against Modi are Ajay Rai (Congress), Ather Jamal Lari (BSP), Kolisetty Shiva Kumar (Yuga Thulasi Party), Gagan Prakash Yadav, (Apna Dal, Kameravadi), and independents Dinesh Kumar Yadav and Sanjay Kumar Tiwari.
The polls in South Bengal, a traditional TMC stronghold, will test the party’s dominance amid an ‘old versus new’ power struggle, with the national spotlight on Sandeshkhali in Basirhat due to allegations of atrocities on women and land grabs.
The seventh phase will cover Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jayanagar, Mathurapur, Diamond Harbour, Jadavpur, Kolkata Dakshin, and Kolkata Uttar, where the TMC secured victories in the 2019 elections.
TMC heavyweight Abhishek Banerjee, considered the party’s de facto number two, is contesting from Diamond Harbour. Banerjee’s performance in this seat, which the TMC touts as a ‘model constituency’, will be closely watched as the opposition attempts to paint it as a ‘laboratory of violence’. The two-time MP faces CPI (M)’s Pratikur Rahaman and BJP’s Abhijit Das in a three-way contest.
The BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal are contesting the polls on their own for the first time since 1996 while two INDIA bloc parties – the Congress and AAP – have fielded their own candidates.
The prestige of Ranaut and Himachal Pradesh minister Vikramaditya Singh Singh, the heir of the erstwhile Rampur royal family and son of six-time former chief minister Virbhadra Singh, is at stake in Mandi.
Stakes are also high for Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Thakur, who is seeking a fifth term from Hamirpur, and former Union minister Anand Sharma, who is the Congress candidate from the Kangra Lok Sabha constituency, while for Sukhu, the six assembly by-polls are for survival and stability of his 17-month-old government.
(Disclaimer: The headline, subheads, and intro of this report along with the photos may have been reworked by South First. The rest of the content is from a syndicated feed, and has been edited for style.)
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