Polls 2019: Varanasi to vote on May 19; Gandhi bastions on May 6

With the Election Commission sounding the bugle for Lok Sabha elections, the date sheet shows Varanasi constituency represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi voting last on May 19 while a number of high-profile seats including of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi will vote on May 6.

Voting in Lucknow, which elected Home Minister Rajnath Singh in 2014, would also vote on May 6 and so will be the case for another high-profile union minister Ram Vilas Paswan's Hajipur constituency.

Vadodara, which had also elected Modi in the 2014 general elections, will go to vote on April 23 and so will Puri in Odisha, which is being widely rumoured as another seat from which the prime minister can fight the 2019 elections. However, there has been no official word from the BJP on this.

 

BJP's senior leader Lal Krishna Advani's Gandhinagar constituency in Gujarat will also vote on April 23, the same day when polling will take place in Pilibhit, currently represented by Maneka Gandhi. Her son Varun Gandhi's Sultanpur constituency will vote on May 12.

Mainpuri, one of the two seats that elected Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2014, will also vote on April 23, while voting in Azamgarh, which the senior Samajwadi Party leader retained, will happen on May 12. Kannauj, which elected his daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav in 2014, will vote on April 29.

Firebrand saffron party leader Uma Bharati's Jhansi constituency and senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi's Kanpur constituency will also vote on April 29, while Vidisha, which elected senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj in 2014, will go to polls on May 12.

Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia's Guna seat in Madhya Pradesh will vote on May 12. The party chief Rahul Gandhi's Amethi seat and Sonia Gandhi's Rae Bareli will vote on May 6.

Amritsar, from where Arun Jaitley lost in 2014, will vote on May 19.

During the entire poll schedule of more than one month, the first phase voting will take place on April 11 and the last seventh phase on May 19.

Counting of votes will happen on May 23.