On Monday, May 13, voting for the fourth phase of the Lok Sabha elections of 2024 will take place in 96 Parliamentary Constituencies spread over nine states and one union territory. On the same day, elections will be held for all 175 seats in the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly and 28 seats in the Odisha legislative assembly. Voting in all Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies started at 7 a.m. and will run till 6 p.m.
All 17 of Telangana’s Lok Sabha seats, all 25 of Andhra Pradesh’s seats, 13 of Uttar Pradesh’s seats, five of Bihar’s, four of Jharkhand’s, eight of Madhya Pradesh’s seats, eleven of Maharashtra’s seats, four of Odisha, eight of West Bengal’s seats, and one of Jammu and Kashmir’s seats will all conduct polling.
During this stage, the conflict between narratives was dominated by themes like jobs, appeasement politics, corruption, and reservations.
Phase 4 of the Lok Sabha elections will feature 1,717 candidates from 10 states and the Union Territory, according to the Election Commission of India. A total of 4,264 nominations were submitted for 96 parliamentary constituencies nationwide, according to the poll panel.
According to the electoral commission, Telangana received the most nomination forms (1,488), followed by Andhra Pradesh (1,103) from 25 constituencies.
In an effort to boost voter turnout, the poll authority announced on Sunday that the polling hours in a few assembly segments of Telangana’s 17 parliamentary constituencies had been extended from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
This is Kashmir’s first significant election following the repeal of Article 370 in August 2019.
Of these 96 seats, MPs from the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA will be voting in the fourth round of the Lok Sabha elections.
All eyes are on a number of high-profile candidates, including former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav, who is running from Kannauj, and Union ministers Raosaheb Danve (Jalna, Maharashtra), Nityanand Rai (Ujiarpur, Bihar), and Giriraj Singh (Begusarai, Bihar).
Along with Pankaja Munde of the BJP in Beed, Maharashtra, former cricket player Yusuf Pathan of the Trinamool Congress and Congress politician Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury are fighting for victory in Baharampur, West Bengal. Asaduddin Owaisi, the president of AIMIM in Hyderabad, Telangana, and YS Sharmila, the head of the Andhra Pradesh Congress in Kadapa, are also highlighted.
Mahua Moitra of the TMC is running for reelection from Krishnanagar in West Bengal. She was kicked out of the Lok Sabha due to accusations of accepting cash in exchange for a question. The conflict between veteran BJP leader SS Ahluwalia and actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha intensifies in Asansol.
The India Meteorological Department forecast that there won’t be any heatwave-like circumstances in the parliamentary seats taking part in the fourth phase of voting, and that normal to below-average temperatures will prevail there on election day.
In the first three stages of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, 66.14%, 66.71%, and 65.68% of voters participated, respectively.
