New Delhi, May 12 (Bureau) The fate of over 1700 candidates would be sealed as voting takes place on 96 seats spread over nine states and a Union Territory in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections on Monday. As per the Election Commission figures, 1,717 candidates are in the race on the morrow, when all 25 constituencies in Andhra Pradesh (rpt) Andhra Pradesh and 17 seats in Telangana will complete polling in a single phase. tomorrow. Also going to the hustings are 13 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 11 in Maharashtra, eight seats each in Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, 5 in Bihar, four seats each in Jharkhand and Odisha, and one seat in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The star candidates in this phase include Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh. He is up against the BJP’s Subrat Pathak. In Lakhimpur Kheri of the same state, the BJP has fielded the minister of state for home in the Modi government, Ajay Mishra Teni, against SP’s Utkarsh Verma. West Bengal will also see some high-profile battles.
Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) firebrand leader Mahua Moitra, who was expelled from the lower House of parliament over cash-for-query allegations, will contest against BJP’s Amrita Roy from the Krishnagar Lok Sabha constituency. Roy belongs to the royal family of Krishnanagar. In Baharampur, leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is crossinG swords with Gujarat-born ex-Indian cricketer Yusuf Pathan, who has been fielded by the TMC. The BJP has nominated Nirmal Kumar Saha in what is could turn out to be a gripping triangular contest. The constituency to watch out for in Bihar is Begusarai, where incumbent BJP heavyweight and Union Minister Giriraj Singh is seeking re-election, pitted against CPI Candidate Awadhesh Kumar Rai. The single-phase Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh for 175 seats and the 28 Legislative Assembly seats in Odisha are also going to polls in this phase. Over 19 lakh polling officials are being deployed across one lakh 92 thousand polling stations.
The voting will begin at 7 AM and end at 6 PM. The commission said polling time in certain assembly segments of the 17 parliamentary constituencies of Telangana has been increased to improve voters’ participation. The first three phases of the election, which were held on April 19, April 26, and May 7, saw a voter turnout of 66.1, 66.7, and 65.68 per cent, respectively. The Election Commission is conducting the polls for the 543-seat Lok Sabha in seven phases, with voting already completed in over half of the constituencies The polling for the coming three phases will be held on May 20, May 25 and June 1. The counting takes place on June 4.