Lok Sabha Election 2024 Phase 5: 49 Seats Up For Grabs In Phase 5, Top Leaders In Most Contests: 10 Points
New Delhi:
Voting will be held on 49 seats across six states and two Union Territories today. A chunk of the seats are in Uttar Pradesh. Among them is Congress bastion Raebareli, from where Rahul Gandhi is contesting, and Amethi, held by BJP’s Smriti Irani.
Here are the Top 10 points in this big story:
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Voting will be held for five seats in Bihar, Jharkhand (3), Maharashtra (13), Odisha (5), UP (14), West Bengal (7) and two Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir (1) and Ladakh (1). With this phase, election will be over in Maharashtra and Ladakh.
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Voting will be held for 35 seats of the Odisha Assembly along with 21 Lok Sabha seats of the state as part of the simultaneous polling in the state.
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The big fight will be over several of the 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 13 seats of Maharashtra, many of which are in the Shiv Sena stronghold. The clash will be between two factions of the party, led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his predecessor Uddhav Thackeray.
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While the fifth phase has the least number of seats, most of these are high-profile constituencies from where Union Ministers and leaders of national and regional parties are contesting. in 2019, the BJP won 32 of the 49 seats.
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The list of key candidates include Union Ministers Piyush Goyal (Mumbai North), Bharati Pawar (Dindori), Smriti Irani (Amethi), Rajnath Singh (Lucknow).
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Among key allies are Lok Janshakti Party-Ram Vilas chief Chirag Paswan (Hajipur), Shrikant Shinde, son of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde (Kalyan).
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From the Opposition, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi is defending his mother Sonia Gandhi’s bastion Raebareli after she moved onto Rajya Sabha; RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter Rohini Acharya is contesting against BJP’s former Union Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy from Saran; Shiv Sena-UBT leader and former Union Minister Arvind Sawant is contesting from Mumbai South.
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In Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla, National Conference Vice President and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah faces the PDP’s Faiyaz A. Mir, People’s Conference chief Sajad Ghani Lone, and Awami Ittehad Party chief, the jailed Engineer Rashid.
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The next and penultimate phase, comprising 58 seats, is slated to be held on May 25, with Haryana and Delhi joining in for a single-phase polling.
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The counting of votes will be held on June 4 after the last phase of the election ends on June 1.
