PHASE 2 ENDS

ing a historic third consecutive term, hoping to become only the second PM after Jawaharlal Nehru to achieve this feat. The Opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) is aiming to use a mix of economic agenda and social redistribution promise to damage the Bharatiya Janata Party’s electoral coalition.

“To all my dear citizens, from 89 Constituencies in 13 States and UTS, do not get swayed by any diversionary tactics and lies. Always make your vote count,” Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said.

Turnout has been a creeping concern since the general elections first kicked off on April 19 with experts underlining voter apathy and the searing summer as possible reasons for the milderthan-usual turnout.

On the electoral rolls on Friday were 158.8 million voters, including 3.5 million first-time ones and 32.8 million people between the ages of 20 and 29. On April 19, 102 seats went to polls in the first phase (including some parts of the Outer Manipur constituency, where the remaining parts voted on Friday).

To be sure, the polls were originally slated for 89 seats, but the death of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Ashok Bhalavi in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul, led to ECI adjourning the election.

Six of the 88 seats — five in Assam and one in Jammu — were redrawn after a delimitation exercise in 2023. The 82 others saw a turnout of 69.6% in 2019. Six seats of these 88 seats are reserved for scheduled tribes, nine are reserved for scheduled castes.

Of these seats, 56 were held by the NDA, of which 47 were with the BJP. Twenty-three were held by INDIA, of which 17 were with the Congress.

Focus was on the turnout in the 14 seats of Karnataka, where the ruling Congress is hoping to dent the BJP’S impressive record of winning 25 out of the 28 Lok Sabha seats five years ago. The provisional turnout stood at 68.2%, compared to 68.9% in 2019. In the four seats of capital Bengaluru, the turnout averaged at 56.6%, compared to 56.9% in 2019.

Voting was also held in eight seats in Uttar Pradesh, including the national capital region cities of Noida and Ghaziabad. Turnout at the Gautam Buddha Nagar seat was 53.21% as against 60.5% in 2019, while the turnout in Ghaziabad was 49.65% as against 55.86% in 2019.

In Rajasthan — 13 of its 25 seats went to polls in the second phase after 12 in the first — the Congress will hope to make inroads in a state the BJP swept in 2019; several high profile candidates such as Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla, and the sons of former chief ministers Ashok Gehlot and Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Vaibhav Gehlot and Dushyant Singh respectively, are in the fray.

The turnout stood at 64.1%, compared to 68.4% in 2019.

In Kerala, where all 20 seats went to the polls, the Congress hopes to stave off the twin challenges of the BJP that hopes to break through in southern India (two of its ministers are contesting), and the Left which controls the state government.

While the Left and the Congress are both part of the INDIA alliance, they are fighting separately in Kerala in a campaign that has seen Wayanad MP and candidate Rahul Gandhi and chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan take potshots at each other.

The turnout stood at 65.8%, compared to 77.8% in 2019.

Voting was also held in parts of Outer Manipur, the only seat that saw elections held in two phases — an indicator of the security challenge in a state that has been rocked by ethnic violence for close to a year. The total turnout for the state where 221 people have died in ethnic clashes since May 2023 stood at 77.3%, compared to 83.9% in 2019.

The elections come in the middle of a harsh summer with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicting intense heat wave conditions particularly in eastern India; in states such as West Bengal and Bihar, temperatures ARE expected to cross 43 degrees Celsius.

“Voters participated enthusiastically to cast their vote at their polling stations, braving the hot weather conditions,” the ECI said in a statement.

Campaigning for the second phase was dominated by controversies linked to the Congress manifesto with Modi alleging that the Opposition party intends to reintroduce the inheritance tax and redistribute the benefits of reservation and wealth to Muslims.

On Tuesday, Modi latched on to comments made by Indian Overseas Congress chief Sam Pitroda, who suggested that an inheritance tax should be “discussed and debated” .

The Congress distanced itself from Pitroda’s comments and said it had no intention of introducing such a tax, but added that it the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government which had abolished the Estate Duty Tax, and that it was in fact, BJP leaders that had advocated for it over the past decade.

In Karnataka, seats such as Mandya and Hassan, bastions of the Deve Gowda family, saw a keen contest between the BJP-JD(S) alliance and the Congress.

In Bihar, five seats went to the polls, including Purnea, where independent Pappu Yadav is looking to upset both the RJD and the JD(U).