Gujarat will vote in the first phase of assembly polls on Thursday (Representational)
Voting in the first phase of the Gujarat Assembly elections will take place on December 1. Voting for 89 seats of the 182-member assembly will take place in phase one. The voting will be held between 8 am and 5 pm on Thursday across 14,382 polling stations in the state.
The second phase of the election will be held on December 5. The Gujarat assembly polls 2022 result will be declared on December 8 along with the Himachal Pradesh assembly election results.
A day before voting in phase 1 of the Gujarat assembly elections 2022, take a quick look at five key points:
1. A total of 788 candidates will contest 89 seats in the first phase of the election. These include nominees from 39 parties and 339 independent candidates. As many as 2,39,76,760 people are eligible to cast their votes in the first phase, according to Gujarat's Chief Electoral Officer P Bharathi. Of these, 5.74 lakh voters are in the age group of 18-19 years.
2. Gujarat is a BJP bastion and home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The BJP has been ruling the state for 27 years after first coming to power in 1995.
3. In the first phase, the BJP and Congress will be contest on all the seats. Whereas, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has candidates representing 88 seats. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will fight in 57 seats and All Indian Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in six.
4. The campaigning for the first phase, which ended on November 29, saw the participation of top leaders including PM Modi, Mr Shah, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who also heads the AAP. The AAP chief has claimed that his party will form the government in Gujarat.
5. The major constituencies that will go to poll in the first phase include Khambhalia, Ghatlodia, Jamnagar North, Morbi, Surat, Porbandar and Dwarka. The Ghatlodia seat, one of BJP's strongholds, will see a fight between Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and Amee Yajnik of the Congress. For the Viramgam seat, BJP has fielded Congress import, Hardik Patel, while Bharwad Lakhabhai Bhikhabhai will be contesting on a Congress ticket.