Of the 57 seats going to polls today, nine are from West Bengal, 13 from Uttar Pradesh, eight from Bihar, six from Odisha, four from Himachal Pradesh, three from Jharkhand, and the lone seat of Union Territory Chandigarh.
All 13 seats of Punjab are also on today’s list. The election is expected to be triangular, with INDIA allies Congress and Aam Aadmi Party having a “friendly” contest that is expected to split the non-BJP vote and play into BJP hands.
Polling will also take place for the remaining 42 assembly seats and six Lok Sabha seats in Odisha. The BJP, which has replaced the Congress as the main Opposition party, is hoping to corner Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal.
By-elections are being held on six assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh, which will also have a bearing on the fortunes of the state’s Congress government. All six seats were held by Congress but the MLAs had turned rebel and cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha election, resigned and joined the BJP.
Varanasi, the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also votes today. PM Modi had won the seat first in 2014. The Congress has fielded Ajai Rai, who finished third in the two last Lok Sabha elections.
The other prominent leaders in fray include the BJP’s Union Minister Anurag Thakur, who is contesting from Hamirpur, Junior finance minister Pankaj Chaudhary from Maharajganj, actor-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut, who is contesting against Congress’s Vikramaditya Singh in Mandi, the other actor-politician Ravi Kishan from Gorakhpur.
NDA leaders like RLM chief Upendra Kushwaha from Karakat, Apna Dal (Sonelal)’s Union Minister Anupriya Patel from Mirzapur are also in fray.
From the Opposition, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamool Congress candidate Abhishek Banerjee is contesting from Diamond Harbour; Misa Bharti, daughter of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad from Pataliputra, and Congress’s Charanjeet Singh Channi from Jalandhar.
The election will be followed by exit polls, which have been boycotted by the Congress. This the BJP has said, makes it clear that the Opposition has conceded defeat. “I want to tell the Congress party not to run away, face the defeat and introspect,” Union minister and the BJP’s chief strategist Amit Shah has said.
The counting of votes will take place on June 4. Along with the Lok Sabha seats, counting will also be held for two state polls – Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Votes for Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim will be counted on Sunday.
