LS Polls today:: Today is the first day of the election
The first phase of the Lok Sabha elections today has many swing seats that will make or break the chances of parties. People will vote to elect MPs in 102 seats. The BJP is looking for a third team, while INDIA bloc is hoping for a win somehow.
Here's your 10-point cheatsheet to this big story:
The Coimbatore Lok Sabha seat will see a high-stakes battle, with Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai facing DMK leader Ganapathy P Rajkumar and AIADMK's Singai Ramachandran. The candidature of its Tamil Nadu state president shows the BJP is pressing hard to increase its presence in south India.
Union Minister and BJP leader Nitin Gadkari is eyeing a third straight victory from Maharashtra's Nagpur seat. The seat will see a contest between Mr Gadkari and Congress candidate Vikas Thakre, who is at present the Nagpur West MLA.
Jitin Prasada, who quit Congress in 2021, is among the key candidates of the BJP in the first phase. He replaced two-time MP from Uttar Pradesh's Pilibhit, Varun Gandhi. The BJP got a solid majority in UP in the previous two Lok Sabha elections. The Samajwadi Party fielded Bhagwant Saran Gangwar, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fielded Anees Ahmes Khan against Mr Prasada.
Former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi is contesting from Gaya. This election holds important political significance for the 79-year-old Manjhi. Gaya has the highest number of candidates - 14 in total - contesting the elections. The BJP has left the Gaya (reserved) seat for its ally, the Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular (HAM-S).
The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to snatch the only seat won by the Congress in the 2019 elections, Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh. Nakul Nath, son of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, is fighting again from the Chhindwara seat against BJP candidate Vivek Bunty Sahu, who had lost to Kamal Nath in the last two assembly polls.
The Jorhat seat in Assam will decide if the Congress's deputy leader in Lok Sabha, Gaurav Gogoi, can make it to the elected house this time too. The Constituency has been seen as a stronghold of the BJP. Mr Gogoi's decision to contest the elections from Jorhat, instead of his family's stronghold Kaziranga (erstwhile Kaliabor) -- from where he is the MP -- has made the contest interesting.
The assembly elections in Arunachal Pradesh (60 seats) and Sikkim (32 seats) will also be held today. Voting will begin at 7 am and end at 6 pm. The Election Commission has deployed over 18 lakh polling personnel across 1.87 lakh polling stations; over 16.63 crore people are eligible to vote.
Polling will be held in all seats of Tamil Nadu (39), Uttarakhand (5), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Meghalaya (2), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (1), Mizoram (1), Nagaland (1), Puducherry (1), Sikkim (1) and Lakshadweep (1).
Besides, there will be voting in 12 seats in Rajasthan, 8 in Uttar Pradesh, 6 in Madhya Pradesh, 5 seats each in Assam and Maharashtra, 4 in Bihar, 3 in West Bengal, 2 seats in Manipur, and one seat each in Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir, and Chhattisgarh.
In 2019, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won 45 of these 102 seats and the NDA 41. Six of these seats have been redrawn as part of the delimitation exercise.
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