Voting for the Lok Sabha’s fifth round is presently taking place in 49 constituencies spread over two Union Territories and six states. Numerous well-known figures, like as former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani, and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, will find out their electoral fate in this round.
Main focus is on Rahul Gandhi and Smriti Irani’s high-profile fights in Congress strongholds Amethi and Raebareli. Irani is facing off against Congress supporter Kishori Lal Sharma, while Rahul Gandhi is facing off against Raebareli’s Dinesh Pratap Singh of the BJP.
The total voter turnout up to 11 a.m. was 23.66%, with Bengal having the highest percentage at 32.70%, followed by Ladakh at 26.77% and Uttar Pradesh at 26.76%. With 15.93% of the vote, Maharashtra has had the lowest turnout to date.
Voters in 49 seats were exhorted to “vote in record numbers” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I specially call upon women voters and young voters to exercise their franchise,” he wrote on Twitter.
In Mumbai, where voting is taking place, a number of well-known Bollywood actors and personalities were spotted casting their ballots. These included actor Akshay Kumar, film director Zoya Akhtar, actor-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar, actor Jahnvi Kapoor, and chairman and MD of Reliance Group Anil Ambani.
On Monday, Arjun Singh, a BJP MP and contender from Barrackpore in Bengal, claimed that Partha Bhowmick, the Trinamool Congress nominee in the seat, “distributed money last night” in an attempt to encourage “hooliganism”. “We will try to have peaceful elections but if that doesn’t happen, government would be responsible for it.” .
Piyush Goyal, the BJP’s candidate for the Mumbai North Lok Sabha, cast his ballot and encouraged everyone to take part in the “festival of democracy”. Mayawati, the leader of the BSP, voted in Lucknow while expressing her “hopeful of a change (in power)” this time. After casting his ballot, former chief minister of J&K Omar Abdullah poked fun at the BJP-led Centre, saying that assertions that an increase in tourists had occurred in the Valley as a result of normalcy are “not good”.
There are 695 contenders running for the 49 seats up for grabs, 82 of whom are female. Voters are being urged to cast more ballots by the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is concerned about the poor turnout in the previous four stages.
There are more than 8.95 crore voters who can cast ballots in this round, including 4.26 crore women and 5,409 electors who identify as third gender. 9.47 lakh poll workers have been assigned to 94,732 voting places nationwide in order to streamline the process.
13 seats in Maharashtra, 14 in Uttar Pradesh, 7 in Bengal, 5 in each of Bihar and Odisha, 3 in Jharkhand, and 1 in each of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are among the 49 seats up for election today.
Among the well-known candidates in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections are Union Ministers Piyush Goyal (Mumbai North), Rajnath Singh (Lucknow), Smriti Irani (Amethi), and Chirag Paswan (Hajipur); BJP’s Locket Chatterjee (Hooghly); BJD President and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik; former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah (Baramulla); and Congress’s Tsering Namgyal, among others.
The fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections encompasses the fewest seats (49), with the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) having previously held over 40 of these seats.
In seven Bengali constituencies where poll-related violence has been known to occur, security has been stepped up. During this phase, more than 57% of polling places were classified as sensitive, the greatest percentage in any Lok Sabha election thus far. According to an official, over 30,000 state police officers and over 60,000 members of the central forces have also been deployed.
Voter turnout for the Lok Sabha elections has been 66.95 percent overall over the last four stages. During these phases, about 45 million electors have used their right to vote. Voting has concluded for 379 seats, 23 states, and Union territories. Phases six and seven are slated for May 25 and June 1, respectively, with June 4 for vote counting.
