Rahul Gandhi To Ramayan Actor: A Look At 5 Key Lok Sabha Contests Today

The second of seven phases of the Lok Sabha polls will take place on Friday and the stage is set for exciting contests in some of the 88 constituencies across 13 states and Union Territories where votes will be cast.

Here's A Look At Five Gripping Fixtures:

Rahul Gandhi Vs Annie Raja 

Polling will be carried out in all 20 seats in Kerala and the state will see some of the most-watched face-offs. In Wayanad, sitting MP and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will contest for the second time and his primary opponent in the largely bipolar state is the CPI's Annie Raja. While it is unclear whether Mr Gandhi will also contest from Amethi, the Gandhi family bastion where he suffered a shock defeat in 2019 to the BJP's Smriti Irani, winning this seat will be crucial for the Congress leader either way.

In 2019, Mr Gandhi had defeated the CPI candidate from Wayanad, PP Suneer, by a margin of over 4 lakh votes.

Ms Raja, a member of the national executive of the CPI and the wife of party general secretary D Raja, has criticised Rahul Gandhi and promised more consistent representation. The CPM-led LDF government in the state has also been critical of Mr Gandhi and the attacks against him have been led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, drawing counter-attacks from the Congress. 

The sharp exchanges are all the more significant given that the Congress and the Left Front are partners in the INDIA bloc at the Centre but are giving no quarter to each other in their battle in the state. The Congress had won 15 of the 20 seats in 2019.

Giving the contest another interesting dimension is that the BJP has fielded its state president K Surendran from Wayanad as part of a concerted effort to open its Lok Sabha account in the state and do better in the south in general. In an earlier interview with NDTV, Mr Surendran said he stood a good chance of winning the seat because people are disappointed with the work done by Rahul Gandhi. 

Shashi Tharoor Vs Rajeev Chandrasekhar

About 400 km south of Wayanad lies Kerala's capital of Thiruvananthapuram, which is going to see a battle of heavyweights. The Congress' Shashi Tharoor, a three-time MP from the constituency, will face off against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar. 

Despite having held the seat for three terms, Mr Tharoor is seen as a popular MP and has previously said that the only way the BJP's claim of winning seats in the double digits in Kerala can be true is if both digits are zero. "The issue with the BJP is that they don't understand Kerala's history and culture... Communalism cannot go beyond a small limit here," he had said. 

Mr Chandrasekhar, who is making his electoral debut, has said Mr Tharoor has failed to get any work done in the constituency and that the contest would be between the "politics of performance" - a reference to the BJP-led central government's work - and "15 years of non-performance"

The third most-watched candidate from the seat is the CPI's Pannyan Raveendran, a veteran leader who was the MP from Thiruvananthapuram - winning a bypoll in 2005 - before Mr Tharoor began his winning streak. The CPI leader had also contested the Kerala Assembly polls in 2011, but lost to a Congress leader. 

KC Venugopal Vs AM Ariff

Alappuzha is the only seat in Kerala that the CPM had won in 2019 and what makes the constituency even more interesting is that it will see a contest between senior Congress leader KC Venugopal, who was elected from there in 2009 and 2014, and the sitting MP, the CPM's AM Ariff.

Mr Venugopal, who is a Rajya Sabha MP and the General Secretary (Organisation) of the Congress, had decided not to contest the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 because he had larger responsibilities and said he is doing so this time because Congress workers want him to. 

The sitting MP, Mr Ariff, has released a 12-page booklet listing out his achievements, many of which have been claimed by the Congress and the BJP as their own. He has also dismissed the Congress' claim of winning all 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state and alleged that the party does this during every election.

The third key candidate in the seat is the BJP's Sobha Surendran, who has said the people will vote for her to make her part of PM Narendra Modi's team. "During the UPA tenure, India's economy was down like those of Pakistan and Sri Lanka in recent times. But ten years under Narendra Modi's rule and India has become the fifth largest economy," she was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Arun Govil vs Sunita Verma 

Over in Uttar Pradesh, eight of whose 80 constituencies are going to the polls in the second phase, Meerut is seeing a fight in which one of the contestants is being worshipped, literally, by some supporters. The BJP's Arun Govil played the role of Lord Ram in the popular TV series Ramayan and, despite the godlike status accorded to him by some, he faces a tough contest in the seat from the Samajwadi Party's Sunita Verma and the BSP's Devvrat Tyagi. 

Mr Govil, who is making his electoral debut and lives in Mumbai, has been criticised for being an outsider and has admitted that he does not have a very strong understanding of local issues, but has promised to move to Meerut and speak to people to understand their problems after he is elected. The BJP, which had won 62 of UP's 80 constituencies in 2019, will be fancying its chances in Meerut where it has been on a winning streak since 2009 and has won a total of six times. 

The main contender against Mr Govil is the Samajwadi Party's Sunita Verma, who is a former mayor of the city. The finalisation of the face by the party, however, was a long-drawn-out affair and involved two declared candidates - Bhanu Pratap Singh and Atul Pradhan - being dropped. Ms Verma was earlier with the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Tejasvi Surya Vs Sowmya Reddy

The Bengaluru South Lok Sabha constituency, which has elected only BJP candidates since 1991, will see a battle between Tejasvi Surya and the Congress' Sowmya Reddy. Mr Surya was elected with a margin of over 3 lakh votes in 2019, but the Congress is hoping that Ms Reddy's pedigree - she is the daughter of state transport minister Ramalinga Reddy - and the party's winning performance in the Assembly polls last year will swing things in its favour.

Mr Surya, 33, who is the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP,  has expressed confidence that his work towards improving Bengaluru's infrastructure will win him another term. Another thing that is working in the BJP's favour is that the Congress has emerged victorious in the constituency only once since 1977, when former chief minister R Gundu Rao was elected in the 1989 Lok Sabha polls. 

Ms Reddy, 41, is banking on the Congress' guarantees, which had helped it win last year's Assembly elections, to help it buck the trend. The Congress leader is a former MLA from Jayanagar and lost the constituency by just 16 votes was heart-broken when she lost by a mere 16 votes in her re-election bid in this city constituency in the Assembly elections last year.

Claiming that people are disappointed with Mr Surya because he has not been accessible and did not speak up for Karnataka in Parliament, Ms Reddy told PTI, "All he (Mr Surya) has been doing is spreading hate and doing divisive politics."