93 constituencies go to polls today
Polling for more than half of the total number of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies will be completed by the end of the third phase of voting today, when the electoral fate of several high-profile leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah and Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, will be sealed.
Four constituencies in the State of West Bengal will go to polls in the third phase, including Murshidabad, where State Secretary Mohammed Salim from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is pitted against sitting lawmaker Abu Taher Khan from Trinamool Congress and Gouri Shankar Ghosh from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The other three constituencies in West Bengal going to polls today are Maldaha Uttar, Maldaha Dakshin, and Jangipur.
Voting will take place for 93 Lok Sabha seats across 12 states and union territories today amidst expectations among the key political parties and the Election Commission that the turnout of voters will go up compared to the first two phases of polling held on April 19 and 26, covering 190 seats.
With the exception of Surat, where the BJP won unopposed, voting will be held for 25 of the 26 seats in Gujarat today, while polling in Anantnag-Rajouri constituency in Jammu and Kashmir has been postponed.
Other leading candidates in the third phase are federal ministers Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad, Karnataka); Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna, Madhya Pradesh); former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh); Congress leader Digvijaya Singh (Rajgarh, Madhya Pradesh),; Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav (Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh); and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar's daughter and three-time sitting MP Supriya Sule (Baramati, Maharashtra).
The stakes are high for BJP and its allies in the third phase, as they had won 75 of the 93 seats in the last general elections in 2019, while INDIA bloc parties won 11.
With a platform that combines Hindu nationalism and development concerns, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is seeking a third consecutive term in this general election. Meanwhile, the opposition INDIA bloc is campaigning on a platform of caste, bread-and-butter politics, and financial handouts to women.
A total of 190 seats went to the polls on April 19 and 27, with an approximate voter turnout of 66 percent, the Election Commission said. The number was lower than the last election in 2019. The BJP had been hoping for a high turnout, believing that it would signal that its supporters had voted in force.
The Indian election will come to a close on June 1, and votes will be counted on June 4.
The consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22 this year is set to play an important role in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's quest for a rare third term. He offered prayers at the temple for the first time yesterday, after the grand shrine was inaugurated more than three months ago. After offering prayers, Modi held a road show in Ayodhya.
Modi's visit to the temple follows an assessment by several political observers that the party would have reaped rich gains had the election been held during February-March when the fervour over the temple was at its peak.
In the absence of a single issue or a wave dominating the electioneering so far, Modi needs to fire up BJP workers and supporters if he hopes for a sweep.
A lack of momentum has been partly attributed to indifference among party workers, who have been lured into believing that victory is assured. The absence of a wave on a single issue in the first two phases of the polls has dampened BJP's hopes of securing a two-thirds majority (362 seats) in the Lok Sabha.
This, most political analysts say, has prompted Modi to change tack in his campaign speeches after the first phase in a bid to energise the party's committed support base, and get them out to polling stations. Accordingly, much of Modi's speeches in the campaign for the second and third phases shifted from the success stories of his governance in his decade-long tenure to polarising issues when targeting Congress, accusing the party of planning to dilute job reservations for scheduled caste, scheduled tribes, and other backward members and give them to Muslims.
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