 "Narendra Modi")
Sixty-four seats will go to the polls in the penultimate round of the Lok Sabha elections on Wednesday, but there is little for the Congress to cheer about in this round.
The whole of Seemandhra and parts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal will cast their vote on Wednesday. The Congress has little political capital left in these areas. But for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), winning or losing the constituencies that go to the polls in UP, Bihar and Uttarakhand could decide the difference between forming the government and sitting in the Opposition.
The fate of 1,737 candidates, including Rahul Gandhi (Amethi), his cousin Varun (Sultanpur), Union minister Beni Prasad Verma (Gonda), cricketer-turned-politician Mohammad Kaif (Phulpur), Ram Vilas Paswan (Hajipur), Rabri Devi and Rajiv Pratap Rudy (Saran) will be decided by 184 million voters.
Elections will also be held on Wednesday in Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, where Pratibha Singh, the wife of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, is contesting and battling charges of corruption and incumbency, while Anurag Thakur, sitting MP and son of former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, is the candidate in Hamirpur.
Seemandhra, comprising the areas of Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra, accounting for 25 seats, will vote on Wednesday for both Lok Sabha and Assembly. In the previous two parliamentary elections, the Congress had done exceedingly well and had contributed overwhelmingly to the making of the UPA government at the Centre. In 2009, the Congress had won 19 of the 25 seats in the region. It had also formed the government in Andhra Pradesh on both the occasions.
Elections will be held in seven Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar, 15 in UP, six in West Bengal, five in Uttarakhand, four in Himachal Pradesh and two in Jammu and Kashmir.
Of course, the most important seat to watch is Amethi, where, from all accounts, incumbent Rahul Gandhi’s margin of victory might come down after Narendra Modi’s stirring performance at his rally minutes before campaigning came to an end. BJP insiders say the ground work about the lack of development in Amethi was done by Kumar Vishwas, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate. Other constituencies in UP like Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Faizabad, Gonda, Bahraich, Shravasti, Phoolpur, Ambedkarnagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Bhadohi, Kaushambi, Allahabad and Kaisarganj are also associated with the Gandhi family and have been the heart of UP politics.
In West Bengal, the Left Front is under pressure to retain the six seats, Bankura, Jhargram, Purulia, Medinipur, Bishnupur and Asansol, it had won in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, though with a reduced margin.
Of the six, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had won four and Forward Bloc and Communist Party of India shared one seat each in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Former actresses Moon Moon Sen and Sandhya Roy and singer Babul Supriyo are expected to give a tough fight in three of the six seats.
In the 2011 Assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress had made deep inroads in the Assembly segments falling under these six seats covering the districts of West Midnapore, Purulia, Bankura and Bardhaman.
