117 seats up for grabs across 15 states today
NEW DELHI: People in 15 states will vote on Tuesday in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections which will see a maximum of 117 seats going to the polls in a single phase of a seven-phased election.
Voting will be completed in all seats of Gujarat, Kerala, Goa, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu with the third phase polls.
The presidents of the two main political parties are in the fray in the third phase with BJP chief Amit Shah making his Lok Sabha election debut from Gandhinagar and Congress President Rahul Gandhi contesting from Wayanad.
This time the BJP will be tested in its bastion Gujarat - where polling will be held for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats - apart from Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, where the party had done well in 2014.
In Karnataka, the BJP is considered to have a firm footing in many of the 14 seats going to the polls on Tuesday. However, the saffron party faces a tough challenge from the Congressjds combine.
The BJP faces a stiff challenge in UP, as the third phase of LS elections will be fought in the “Yadav belt”.
The SP strongholds of Mainpuri, Badaun and Sambhal will go to the polls on Tuesday, and the party’s prospects have received a considerable boost following its alliance with the BSP. SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav is contesting from Mainpuri.
In Maharashtra, the third phase of polling will be held in some NCP strongholds, including Baramati, Madha, Kolhapur and Satara. NCP President Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule is contesting from the party’s bastion in Baramati. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP has sought to beat the anti-incumbency wave against its sitting MPS by replacing all of them.
Of the five seats in Bihar, the BJP had won only one in 2014, and it is again contesting one seat this time. Janata Dal (United), the BJP’S ally in the NDA, is contesting three seats while the LJP is contesting one seat.
In Odisha, the third phase of elections will witness a battle between several political heavyweights as well as former bureaucrats.
In the four constituencies of lower Assam that will go to the polls on Tuesday, both the Congress and the AIUDF are seeking to gain votes by targeting the BJP over its stance in support of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
The Congress will look to augment its tally in Kerala with Rahul Gandhi in the fray from Wayanad. The BJP too is seeing a realistic chance to win four seats in the southern state.
The high-octane Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal reach an exciting third leg on Tuesday. Five constituencies - Balurghat, Malda North, Malda South, Jangipur and Murshidabad - are up for grabs in the third phase.