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Former Congress Rahul Gandhi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be in Amravati of Maharashtra on Wednesday, the last day of campaigning for phase 2 of the Lok Sabha polls on April 26.
Rahul, who will resume campaigning after a brief break due to illness, will address public meetings in Amravati and Solapur while Shah will hold a rally in Amravati following a public event in Alappuzha of Kerala, where the BJP’s Sobha Surendran will take on AICC general secretary K C Venugopal. Later in the day, he will inaugurate the BJP’s election office in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi. While Amravati and Alappuzha go to polls in the second phase, Solapur will vote in the third phase on May 7.
Meanwhile, other senior leaders of both the Congress and BJP will continue their campaigns on Wednesday. All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will be in Wayanad, where Rahul is in the fray, Modi will address a public meeting in Surguja of Chhattisgarh followed by two meetings in Sagar and Betul of Madhya Pradesh. He will also hold a roadshow in Bhopal. “Modi ji will lead the roadshow in Bhopal on April 24,” Madhya Pradesh BJP’s media cell chief Ashish Agrawal said. The roadshow would cover a distance of 1.5 km from the old Vidhan Sabha to New Market area.
Surguja, Bhopal and Sagar go to polls in the third phase while Betul votes on April 26.
BJP national president J P Nadda will be in Bihar and hold three rallies in Bhagalpur, Khagaria and Madhubani. Bhagalpur and Madhubani vote on April 26 while Khagaria goes to polls in the third phase.
SC may pronounce directions on pleas seeking 100% EVM-VVPAT matching
The Supreme Court on Wednesday is likely to pronounce directions on a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
The VVPAT is an independent vote verification system which enables electors to see whether their votes have been cast correctly.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta is scheduled to pronounce the directions on the plea in which order was reserved by the apex court on April 18.
In context: Underscoring the importance of voter satisfaction and trust in the electoral system, the top court had during the hearing told petitioners, who sought its direction to go back to using ballot papers not to suspect the efficacy of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and appreciate if the Election Commission does good work.
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), one of the petitioners, sought reversal of the poll panel’s 2017 decision to replace the transparent glass on VVPAT machines with an opaque glass through which a voter can see the slip only when the light is on for seven seconds.
During the hearing, which spanned for nearly two days, the bench had interacted for nearly an hour with senior Deputy Election Commissioner Nitesh Kumar Vyas to understand the functioning of EVMs and told advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO that voter satisfaction and trust are at the core of the electoral process.
Repolling in 8 booths in Arunachal Pradesh
Repolling will be held on Wednesday in eight polling stations in Arunachal Pradesh, where EVM damage and violence were reported during polling to simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls on April 19, an official said.
The Commission in an order on Sunday declared the polling in the eight polling stations as void and ordered fresh polling between 6 am and 2 pm on April 24, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Liken Koyu said in a communique.
The ruling BJP had already won 10 seats unopposed in the 60-member Assembly.
– With PTI inputs
