- Monday, June 17, 2024
Fifty-eight constituencies across eight states and Union Territories will go to polling in this phase.
By: Shubham Ghosh
IT’S over a month since India’s general elections kicked off and on Saturday (25), the country will host its sixth and penultimate phase when voters from 58 parliamentary constituencies across eight states and federally administered Union Territories (UTs) will decide the fate of 889 candidates.
Voting will begin at 7am local time and end at 6pm local time. Voters who are in the queue by the time polls close will get to cast ballots if that means keeping polling stations for a longer time.
Among the prominent candidates going to the polls in this phase is Kanhaiya Kumar, a former student leader and vocal critic of prime minister Narendra Modi, who has been fielded by the Indian National Congress against Manoj Tiwari, a Bhojpuri film actor and singer in the North East Delhi constituency which he represents.
In the New Delhi seat, Bansuri Swaraj, a lawyer and daughter of India’s late foreign minister Sushma Swaraj, is contesting on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ticket against Somnath Bharti of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
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Also in fray is Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s education minister who is trying to make an entry in the Lok Sabha or Lower House of the parliament from the Sambalpur seat in the eastern state of Odisha, after 2009.
In Kuruskshetra constituency of Haryana, leading industrialist Naveen Jindal is seeking election as a member of the BJP for the first time. He joined the party earlier this year leaving the Congress.
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BJP leader and former chief minister of Haryana Manohar Lal Khattar is also contesting from Karnal against the Congress’s Satpal Brahmachari.
Rao Inderjit Singh, a federal minister, is hoping to continue his victory run from Gurgaon – a satellite city on the outskirts of Delhi where he has won in 2009, 2014 and 2019 — the last two times as a BJP candidate — with actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar of the Congress challenging him.
Menaka Gandhi, a former federal minister, is contesting from Sultanpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh and is pitted against opposition Samajwadi Party’s Ram Bhual Nishad and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Uday Raj Verma. Maneka is the daughter-in-law of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.
The sixth phase will also see the national capital region Delhi going to the polls. It has seven seats in all and the BJP won them all in both 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections. This time, the AAP, which is in power in Delhi, and the Congress have formed an alliance in the state.
Kejriwal was given an interim bail by India’s supreme court earlier this month till June 2 after he was arrested in March in connection with a liquor policy scam and he has been making intense campaigning since then.
The first five phases of the Indian election held on April 19, April 26, May 7, May 13 and May 20 saw voter turnouts of 66.1, 66.7, 61, 67.3 and 60.5 percent, respectively.
Fate of 429 candidates were decided in the first five phases of the elections.
Among the states going to polls in the sixth phase are Haryana (10 constituencies), Jharkhand (four constituencies), Odisha (six constituencies), Uttar Pradesh (14 constituencies), Bihar (eight constituencies), West Bengal (eight constituencies), and Delhi (seven constituencies) and the UT of Jammu and Kashmir (one constituency).
The Congress and its allies won only seven of the 58 seats that will go to polls on Saturday while the BJP and its allies in the National Democratic Alliance won 42.
The BJP and the NDA-allied parties won 42 of these seats.
The seventh and final phase of the election will be held on June 1. The results will be announced on June 4.
