The US govt said these companies, individuals and vessels have played a central role in facilitating and financing the clandestine sale of Iranian UAVs to Russia
Elections for the second phase will be held for 20 seats of Kerala, 14 seats in Karnataka, 13 in Rajasthan, eight each in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, seven in Madhya Pradesh, five each in Assam and Bihar, three each in Bengal and Chhattisgarh and one each in Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Tripura.
Earlier, 89 constituencies were expected to vote in this phase. But polling in Betul, Madhya Pradesh, was rescheduled after the death of a candidate from Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party. Betul will now vote in the third phase, due on May 7.
Key candidates for this round include the BJP’s Union minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar — up against Congress’s Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram; actors Hema Malini, and Arun Govil from 1980s iconic serial Ramayan, senior BJP leader Tejasvi Surya and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, KC Venugopal, Bhupesh Baghel. and Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot.
For both BJP and the Opposition, the most crucial states in this phase will be Karnataka and Kerala. Karnataka is the only BJP bastion in the south, where the Congress won in the last assembly election. The party is hoping to do well amid concerns about delimitation and the disadvantage southern states could face after it.
Further south, the BJP is trying to break into the bipolar politics of Kerala. The party is hoping to open its account in the state having fielded Union ministers Rajiv Chandrasekhar and V. Muraleedharan. In Wayanand, a Congress bastion for over 20 years, it has fielded its state unit president K Surendran against Rahul Gandhi.
For the Opposition, Kerala is a big shining hope. Even though the Left and the Congress are competing against each other in the southern state, victory by either will add to the tally of the Opposition bloc INDIA. Kerala is one of the few states that have never sent a BJP member to parliament.
With north, west and northeast India saturated, the BJP is hoping to expand in the south and east in their quest for 370 seats. The party had won 303 seats in 2019, a majority of them from the Hindi heartland and bastions new and old, including Gujarat and the northeast.
The Congress, though, has claimed it would post a much better performance compared to 2019. After the first phase of the election, their claims have got louder, especially in Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh. Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Tejashwi Yadav has claimed INDIA will win all five seats in Bihar.
The election is being held amid a bitter face-off between the Congress and the BJP. The row was sparked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comment that the Congress, if voted to power, will redistribute the personal wealth of people among “infiltrators” and won’t even spare the mangalsutras of women. The Congress has questioned if the people had to fear for their wealth and mangalsutras in 55 years of the party’s rule and accused the BJP of sidestepping issues that matter.
The next phase of election is due on May 7. The counting of votes will be held on June 4 – three days after the seventh and last phase of election on June 1 .
The second phase of voting in the Lok Sabha elections 2024 will see some of the most closely-watched contests. The focus will be on Kerala, a Left bastion where the stakes are high for both BJP and Congress. As many as 1,202 candidates are contesting from 88 constituencies in this phase on April 26 (Friday). The overall results for all 543 seats will be declared together on June 4.
Here are the top 10 candidates in Phase 2:
Actor-turned-politician Hema Malini has spent two decades in politics, serving as an MP in both Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. She has been representing the Mathura constituency in Lok Sabha since 2014. She describes herself as a devotee of Lord Krishna who wants to serve the people of Mathura, known as the birthplace of the deity.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar (BJP), Thiruvananthapuram
Rajeev Chandrashekhar takes on the Congress’s Shashi Tharoor in his electoral debut from Thiruvananthapuram. He is an MP from Rajya Sabha and a junior minister of State for Information Technology and Skill Development. His profiles on government websites also describe him as an entrepreneur and a technocrat.
A three-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor is a former diplomat known for his impeccable vocabulary and debating skills. He had lost the Congress presidential elections to Mallikarjun Kharge. This election, he takes on Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar in his stronghold.
Rahul Gandhi (Congress), Wayanad
The most prominent face of the opposition side, Rahul Gandhi is the only Gandhi family member to contest elections this time. He will try to defend his Wayanad seat against Kerala BJP chief K Surendra and the CPM’s Annie Raja. It is not known if he will try to win back his Amethi seat too, which goes to polls in Phase 5 (May 20).
Son of Congress veteran Ashok Gehlot, Vaibhav Gehlot will try his luck from Jalore in Rajasthan this time, adjacent to Jodhpur where he had lost to Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in 2019 by over 2.5 lakh votes. Last year, he was summoned in a foreign exchange violation case, prompting his father to attack the centre for alleging misusing central agencies.
Arun Govil commands huge popularity among the masses, being the actor who sketched the role of Lord Ram in the 1987 adaptation of ‘Ramayana’ by Ramanand Sagar. The BJP has fielded him from his hometown Meerut for a triangular contest against his SP and BSP rivals.
The BJP has repeated Tejasvi Surya from Bangalore South, the seat that he won in his maiden election to become the party’s youngest face in the Lok Sabha. A firebrand leader, Mr Surya is known for his spirited debates, though he isn’t unknown to controversies either. In 2022, he had courted controversy after he “mistakenly” opened the emergency exit of an IndiGo plane, and had apologized.
Bhupesh Baghel, a former chief minister, will try his luck with the national elections this time, having lost power in the Chhattisgarh assembly in last year’s state elections. He faces a police case in the alleged Mahadev online betting scam, which he has denounced as a “political conspiracy”.
KC Venugopal, a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, has served as a minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet. A two-time MP from Alappuzha in Kerala (2009-19), he did not contest the 2019 elections and became a Rajya Sabha member a year later. This time, he is pitted against AM Ariff (CPM) and Sobha Surendran (BJP).
Ravindra Singh Bhati is just 26, but has already achieved a spectacular feat in Rajasthan’s political landscape. He polled 80,000 votes in the 2023 assembly elections in Sheopur to become an Independent MLA. He’s contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Barmer, taking on sitting BJP MP Kailash Choudhary and the Congress’s Ummeda Ram Beniwal.