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Polling for the first phase of Lok Sabha elections is underway on Friday in which more than 1,600 candidates, including eight Union ministers, two former chief ministers and an ex-governor will test their electoral fate.
As many as 102 parliamentary constituencies across 21 states and union territories will go to polls, which is also the largest of the seven phases of the elections.
Moreover, voting will also be held for 92 Assembly seats in the elections in Arunachal Pradesh (32) and Sikkim (60).
Voting began at 7 am and will end at 6 pm, though the closure of poll timings differs in some seats.
The Election Commission has deployed over 18 lakh polling personnel across 1.87 lakh polling stations where over 16.63 crore voters will exercise their franchise.
Voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women and 11,371 third gender. There are as many as 35.67 lakh first time voters, besides 3.51 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years.
Webcasting will be done in more than 50 per cent of the polling stations along with deployment of micro observers in all polling stations. Additionally, 361 observers — 127 general, 67 police and 167 expenditure observers — have already reached their constituencies days before the polls. They will serve as the eyes and ears of the Commission. Special observers have also been deployed in certain states.
Aiming to enhance voter turnout, ahead of the polling, the poll panel had also organised a conference on low voter turnout with focus on parliamentary constituencies with a history of low poll participation in previous elections.
Amongst the prominent leaders trying their electoral luck in phase one are Union ministers Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur, Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal Pradesh (West), Arjun Ram Meghwal from Bikaner, Sarbanada Sonowal from Dibrugarh in Assam, Sanjeev Baliyan from Muzaffarnagar in western UP, Jitendra Singh from Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir and Bhupendra Yadav from Alwar in Rajasthan.
Tamilisai Soundararajan, who recently resigned as governor of Telangana and Lt Governor of Puducherry to return to active politics, is contesting from Chennai South Lok Sabha constituency.
Nakul Nath, son of Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, is seeking reelection from Chhindwara.
Of the two Lok Sabha constituencies in Tripura, the seat of West Tripura that votes in the first phase will see a high-voltage clash between former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb and state Congress president Ashish Kumar Saha.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday will hold public rallies in Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha, Damoh in Madhya Pradesh and Wardha in Maharashtra.
Amroha, which will go to polls in the second phase on April 26, is one of the 16 Lok Sabha seats that the BJP lost in 2019. While BSP turncoat Danish Ali will be the Congress-SP candidate from here, the BJP has fielded Devendra Nagpal from the seat. Damoh and Wardha too go to polls in the second phase.
Meanwhile, BJP national president J P Nadda will be in Kerala and hold one roadshow each in Wayanad, Kottayam and Thiruvananthapuram while he will address a rally in Palakkad. Wayand is currently represented by former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who will be up against senior CPI leader Annie Raja and BJP Kerala chief K Surendran. All 20 seats in Kerala go to polls in the second phase.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah will file his nomination from Gandhinagar in Gujarat. In the evening he will address a rally in Pali and hold a roadshow in Udaipur of Rajasthan. Both the Lok Sabha seats go to polls in the second phase.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge will address a public meeting in Bihar’s Katihar, which will go to polls on April 26. His rally comes a day ahead of Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Bhagalpur.
– With PTI inputs
