New Delhi:
The first phase of today's Lok Sabha elections has many swing seats that will make or break parties' chances. People will vote to elect MPs in 102 seats. The BJP is looking for a third team, while the INDIA bloc is hoping for a win one way or the other.
Here's your 10-point cheat sheet for this big story:
The Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat will see a high-stakes battle with Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai pitted against DMK leader Ganapathy P Rajkumar and AIADMK's Singai Ramachandran. The candidature of the Tamil Nadu state president shows that the BJP is pushing hard to increase its presence in South India.
Union Minister and BJP leader Nitin Gadkari is eyeing a third straight victory from Maharashtra's Nagpur seat. The seat will see a contest between Mr Gadkari and Congress candidate Vikas Thakre, who is currently the Nagpur West MLA.
Jitin Prasada, who quit the Congress in 2021, is among the BJP's leading candidates in the first phase. He replaced Varun Gandhi, two-time MP from Uttar Pradesh's Pilibhit. The BJP won a solid majority in UP in the previous two Lok Sabha elections. The Samajwadi Party fielded Bhagwant Saran Gangwar, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fielded Anees Ahmes Khan against Mr Prasada.
Former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi is contesting from Gaya. This election has important political significance for 79-year-old Manjhi. Gaya has the highest number of candidates (fourteen in total) participating in the elections. The BJP has vacated the Gaya seat (reserved) for its ally, the Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAM-S).
The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to win the only seat won by the Congress in the 2019 elections, Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh. Nakul Nath, son of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, is once again contesting from Chhindwara seat against BJP candidate Vivek Bunty Sahu, who had lost to Kamal Nath in the last two Assembly elections.
The Jorhat seat in Assam will decide whether Congress's deputy leader in Lok Sabha, Gaurav Gogoi, can also make it to the elected House this time. The constituency is seen as a stronghold of the BJP. Mr Gogoi's decision to contest the elections from Jorhat, instead of his family's stronghold Kaziranga (formerly Kaliabor) – where he is an MP – has made the contest interesting.
Assembly elections in Arunachal Pradesh (60 seats) and Sikkim (32 seats) will also take place today. Voting starts at 7am and ends at 6pm. The Election Commission has deployed over 18 lakh polling agents in 1.87 lakh polling stations; more than 16.63 crore people are eligible to vote.
Elections will be held in all seats of Tamil Nadu (39), Uttarakhand (5), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Meghalaya (2), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (1), Mizoram (1), Nagaland (1), Puducherry ( 1), Sikkim (1) and Lakshadweep (1).
Besides, voting will take place in 12 seats in Rajasthan, 8 in Uttar Pradesh, 6 in Madhya Pradesh, 5 seats each in Assam and Maharashtra, 4 in Bihar, 3 in West Bengal, 2 seats in Manipur and one seat in Tripura. , Jammu and Kashmir, and Chhattisgarh.
In 2019, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won 45 of these 102 seats and the NDA 41. Six of these seats have been reshuffled as part of the delimitation exercise.
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