 "Polling officials ahead of the third phase of the general elections in Ahmedabad. (Photo: REUTERS)")
From Union Home Minister Amit Shah looking to win Gandhinagar with a bigger margin to Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia gunning to reclaim his Guna bastion, the seats going to polls on Tuesday will see many interesting fights.
Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) MP Supriya Sule will go head to head with sister-in-law Sunetra — both staking a claim to family homeground Baramati. Voting will take place in 93 constituencies across 11 states and Union Territories (UTs) in the third phase of Lok Sabha polls.
BJP and its then allies (including the undivided Shiv Sena) had won 81 of these seats, including Surat, according to Business Standard calculations. They had swept almost all the seats on offer in Gujarat, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.
By evening on Tuesday, polling would have concluded on 283 seats, or 52 per cent, of the 543 Lok Sabha seats.
According to a State Bank of India research paper, the seats going to polls on Tuesday had recorded 68.4 per cent voter turnout in 2019. Phase-III will also see three members of the Samajwadi Party (SP)’s first family in the contest in Uttar Pradesh, including Dimple Yadav from Mainpuri.
With the result for Surat Lok Sabha seat already announced, the polling will take place on the remainder of the 25 of Gujarat’s Lok Sabha seats and the UTs of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu. The polling will also conclude in Goa (two seats), Assam (four seats), Chhattisgarh (seven seats) and Karnataka (14 seats). Other states where polling will take place are Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to cast his vote at a polling booth in Ahmedabad city that falls within the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the incumbent Gandhinagar MP, is the BJP’s candidate from the seat. Modi is likely to vote at a booth in Nishan Public School in Ranip locality, while Shah will vote at Naranpura sub-zonal office in the city.
Over 1,300 candidates, including around 120 women, are in the fray. Apart from Shah, other Union ministers contesting in the third phase are Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra). Former Madhya Pradesh chief ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Vidisha) and Digvijaya Singh (Rajgarh), former Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai (Haveri) and AIUDF’s Badruddin Ajmal (Dhubri) are also contesting on seats that will poll on Tuesday. In Assam, the BJP has put up only one candidate in this phase for the Guwahati seat, while its alliance partners AGP are contesting in two — Dhubri and Barpeta — and the UPPL in Kokrajhar.
The 93 seats that will see polling include Madhya Pradesh’s Betul where elections were deferred, and eight other seats in that state. The polling for Anantnag, scheduled for the third phase, has been deferred. In Karnataka, the campaign on its remaining 14 seats has been fought under the shadow sexual harassment charges against Janata Dal (Secular) leader Prajwal Revanna.
