Polling began on Sunday morning for 59 Lok Sabha seats in the seventh and final phase of Lok Sabha polls to decide the fate of 918 candidates.
Around10.17 crore people across seven states and a union territory are eligible to exercise their franchise. The Election Commission (EC) has set over 1.12 lakh polling stations and has deployed security personnel for smooth conduct of polling.
Voting is underway in all 13 seats in Punjab and an equal number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, four in Himachal Pradesh, eight seats each in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh three in Jharkhand and one seat of Chandigarh.
The UT of Chandigarh has a total of 6,46,084 voters out of which 3,41,640 are male voters; 3,04,423 are female voters and 21 voters are from the third gender. They will choose between sitting MP and BJP candidate Kirron Kher and former railway minister and Congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal. A total of 597 polling stations have been set up in the UT.
In Uttar Pradesh, all eyes are on Varanasi, PM Modi’s main challengers is Congress’s Ajay Rai.
SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal and union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal are among the 278 candidates whose fate is being decided in Punjab.
Actor-turned-politician and BJP candidate Sunny Deol, Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar are among other prominent candidates in the fray.
Over 1.49 crore electorates will decide the fate of 111 candidates in nine seats of West Bengal.
In Bihar’s Patna Sahib, actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha takes on Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Sinha is being fielded as the joint Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal candidate this time.
PM Modi in a tweet urged the voters to vote in record numbers in the final phase of Lok Sabha Elections.
“Today is the final phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. I urge all those voting in this phase to vote in record numbers. Your one vote will shape India’s development trajectory in the years to come. I also hope first time voters vote enthusiastically,” PM Modi tweeted.
The seven-phase Lok Sabha Elections which began on April 11 will conclude today and the counting of votes will take place on May 23.
