On Monday at 7 am, the fifth round of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections of 2024 will go to vote. Six ninety-nine states and union territories will have 49 seats (General-39, ST-03, and SC-07) where voters will select 695 candidates.
In terms of the total number of seats for which voting will be held, this is the lowest phase. On Monday, there will be simultaneous voting in 35 Odisha Legislative Assembly assembly seats.
The states and union territories where the elections will be held in the 5th phase are Jharkhand (3), Odisha (5), Uttar Pradesh (14), Bihar (5), Maharashtra (13), West Bengal (7), Ladakh (1) and, Jammu and Kashmir (1). When the voting closes in 49 constituencies on Monday, 428 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 seats will have gone to polls in the elections that began on April 19.
Several key candidates are in the fray in the fifth phase, including union minister Smriti Irani, who is eyeing a second term from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi, union ministers Rajnath Singh (Lucknow) and Piyush Goyal (Mumbai North), Congress leader Rahul Gandhi (Rae Bareli), LJP (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan (Hajipur), Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde’s son Shrikant Shinde (Kalyan), National Conference leader Omar Abdullah (Baramulla) and RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter Rohini Acharya (Saran).
Key facts about phase 5:
- Over 8.95 crore voters include 4.69 crore males, 4.26 crore females, and 5,409 third-gender electors.
- Around 9.47 lakh polling officials will welcome over 8.95 crore voters across 94,732 polling stations.
- All eyes will be on Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi and Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seats, both synonymous with the Congress party’s Gandhi family. Rahul Gandhi is contesting from his family borough Rae Bareli against UP horticulture minister Dinesh Pratap Singh of the BJP. Gandhi had lost the Amethi seat to Smriti Irani in 2019 but won the Wayanad seat in Kerala.
- Campaigning for the fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections ended on Saturday, May 18. The last date for filing nominations for this phase was May 3.
According to the Election Commission, until now, the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 has seen the voter turnout of about 66.95%. Around 451 million people have already voted, during the first four phases of ongoing General Elections.
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Source: HT
