Last lap: 10.1 cr eligible to vote today

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 18 

Curtains draw on the most “acrimonious, polarised and bitterly fought” Lok Sabha elections with 59 seats, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi, going to the polls in seven states and a union territory on Sunday. 

The states which will go to the polls are Punjab (13), UP (13), West Bengal (9), Bihar (8), Madhya Pradesh (8), Himachal Pradesh (4), Jharkhand (3) and Chandigarh (1). In 2014, the BJP had won 30 of the 59 seats going to the polls in the last and seventh phase.

In UP, all eyes will be on Varanasi, where besides Modi, 25 other candidates are in fray. Modi’s main challengers are Congress’ Ajay Rai and SP-BSP grand alliance’s nominee Shalini Yadav.

Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal and Union Ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri are among the 278 candidates, including 24 women, whose fate will be decided in Punjab on Sunday. Besides Punjab, more than 6 lakh voters in Chandigarh will choose among sitting BJP MP Kirron Kher, former railway minister and Congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal and AAP’s Harmohan Dhawan.

In Bihar, Union Ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Ram Kripal Yadav, Ashwani Choubey and RK Singh are engaged in a direct fight with the Congress-RJD-RLSP combine. In Himachal Pradesh, there is a direct battle between the BJP and the Congress. In 2014, the BJP had won all four seats — Mandi, Kangra, Shimla and Hamirpur.

The fate of 111 candidates in nine seats of West Bengal will be sealed on Sunday. Eight seats, barring Jadavpur, will witness a contest among the TMC, the BJP, the Congress and the Left Front. The Congress has given the Jadavpur seat a miss. The state has witnessed violence in the six phases of the elections this year.

Madhya Pradesh’s Malwa-Nimar region, where the BJP had won all eight seats in 2014, will vote on Sunday. The BJP lost one seat in the bypolls to the Congress, which is now riding high on the success of the state Assembly elections.

An average of 66.88 per cent voters exercised their franchise in the six phases. The whole elections were spread over 38 days. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.

(With agency inputs)