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The campaigning for the seventh phase of the Lok Sabha elections will come to an end on Thursday. Voting in this final phase will take place on June 1 for the remaining 57 seats. The counting of votes is scheduled for June 4.
On the last day of campaigning for the high-stakes Lok Sabha polls in a process that began over two months ago, the BJP is keeping up its momentum. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur, while BJP president J P Nadda will hold rallies in Amritsar, Faridkot and Rupnagar.
The BJP is contesting the Lok Sabha polls in Punjab this time without its former alliance partner Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) led by Sukhbir Badal. Looking to expand its footprint in the state on its own steam, the BJP is fighting from all its 13 Lok Sabha seats, which are going to vote in the seventh phase.
Meanwhile, the Congress has its own rallies planned out. Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will hold a public meeting at Balasore in Odisha, a state where the BJP is looking to gain this time. The Congress’s performance in the state has been on the decline. In 2019, the party had won just one parliamentary seat — Koraput — and secured a 14% vote share.
Rahul will subsequently head to Punjab, addressing meetings at Khatkar Kalan in the SBS Nagar district, which falls under the Anandpur Sahib Lok Sabha seat. For the Congress too, Punjab is a crucial state that it would like to hold on to. In 2019, the Congress won 8 of the 13 seats and had garnered a 40.12% vote share.
Meanwhile, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will be in Himachal Pradesh for a road show in Solan. The Congress had lost all four seats of the state in 2019, but it now hopes to fare better with its government in the state under Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.
After wrapping up his Lok Sabha campaign, the PM will head to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari on Thursday for a two-day meditation trip.
Top security sources, who are handling the arrangements, told The Indian Express that Modi will arrive in Thiruvananthapuram on May 30, and will take an MI-17 helicopter to Kanyakumari, landing at 4:35 pm. He will witness the sunset at 6:34 pm. Modi will return from Kanyakumari on June 1 at 3:30 pm. From Thiruvananthapuram airport, he will board an IAF aircraft for Delhi at 4:10 pm.
Modi’s visit to Kanyakumari holds significant spiritual and symbolic weight for his followers as Kanyakumari is where Swami Vivekananda claimed to have had a vision of “Bharat Mata”.
In 1892, Swami Vivekananda swam from the shores of Kanyakumari to the rocky islet to meditate. His disciples believe that he meditated there for three days and three nights, and attained enlightenment.
The selection of the Vivekananda Rock as the site for PM Modi’s meditation retreat also assumes significance in light of his pronounced push into the South during this year’s Lok Sabha campaign. Over a third of the PM’s trips to the South occurred in the last three years, with seven visits made to Tamil Nadu in 2024 alone.
Meanwhile, the Congress on Wednesday alleged that Modi was trying to “circumvent” the election’s silence period restrictions with his meditation trip.
A delegation of Congress leaders Randeep Surjewala, Abhishek Singhvi and Syed Naseer Hussain met the Election Commission and urged the poll body to ensure that the PM’s Kanyakumari trip is not aired by the media in violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC).
“The said trip would be widely televised and would therefore be shown during the 48-hour silence period in Varanasi, the constituency from which Shri Narendra Modi is contesting,” the Congress memorandum to the EC said.
— With PTI inputs
