Stage set for phase 4 polls

New Delhi: Ninety-six Lok Sabha (LS) constituencies across 10 states and Union Territories will vote in the Phase-IV of the elections on Monday. These include Madhya Pradesh’s Indore, where the Congress has urged the electorate to press the NOTA (none of the above) button after its candidate, Akshay Kanti Bam, withdrew his nomination and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Elections to all 25 of Lok Sabha and 175 of its Assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh will be held. Polling will also be held in 28 of Odisha’s 146 Assembly seats and four of its 21 Lok Sabha seats.

Polling is over in 283, or 52 per cent, seats until Phase-III and will conclude in 379, or 70 per cent, of the 543 seats by Monday evening.

The Election Commission (EC) said there was no heatwave forecast on the polling day, which will have normal to below normal temperature. Polling time has been increased in some of Telangana’s polling stations to increase voters’ participation.

All the 17 Telangana’s LS seats will vote, in addition to polling in Bihar (5), Jharkhand (4), Madhya Pradesh (8), Maharashtra (11), Uttar Pradesh (13), West Bengal (8), and Srinagar (one) in Jammu and Kashmir.

According to an SBI Research calculation, the voter turnout in 2019’s Phase-IV was 65.5 per cent. In 2019, the BJP had won 42 of these 96 seats, with allies Janata Dal (United) and Lok Janshakti Party winning a seat each. The Telugu Desam Party, currently an ally of the BJP, had won three and the undivided Shiv Sena bagged two seats. Of the Opposition INDIA bloc, the Congress had won six, Nationalist Congress Party and National Conference one each and Trinamool Congress four seats. In the last Lok Sabha polls, regional parties which are constituents of neither the Opposition INDIA bloc nor the ruling National Democratic Alliance, performed well in the seats that will see polling on Monday.

These parties won 35 of the 96 seats, with the YSR Congress Party winning 22, Bharat Rashtra Samithi 9, and Biju Janata Dal and AIMIM two

seats each. he EC released the data for Phase-III of the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday, which it said was 65.68 per cent. The voter turnout in phases I and II were 66.1 per cent and 66.7 per cent, respectively.

Some of the important contestants in the fray in Monday’s polling include Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj), Janata Dal (United)’s Rajiv Ranjan ‘Lalan’ Singh (Munger), AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi, BJP’s Pankaja Munde (Beed), Union minister Raosaheb Danve (Jalna), and Trinamool’s Mohua Moitra (Krishnanagar). In Andhra’s Guntur, Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani of the TDP, with declared assets worth Rs 5,705 crore, the highest until now announced by any candidate in the 2024 Lok Sabha, is in the fray.