Third Phase Polling for 280 out of 543 Seats To Be Completed 17.24 Cr Voters To Pick 93 LS MPs Today

 New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah will lead the voting for the third phase of Lok Sabha elections for 93 seats in 11 states and Union territories on Tuesday.

Shah, civil aviation minister Jyotiradtiya Scindia, former Madhya Pradesh chief ministers Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Digvijay Singh are among the prominent candidates whose fate will be sealed by over 17.24 crore voters.

After Tuesday, polling for 280 out of the 543 seats would be completed, which is past the half way mark. The third phase will be handled by 18.5 lakh polling officials in across 1.85 lakh polling stations.

Gujarat, Goa, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu will complete polling in a single phase on Tuesday. Among the other constituencies voting in the third phase are four in Assam, five in Bihar, seven in Chhattisgarh, eight in Madhya Pradesh, 11 in Maharashtra, 10 in Uttar Pradesh, 14 in Karnataka and four in West Bengal.

Some other prominent names in the fray include Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav, and NCP-Sharad Pawar group leader Supriya Sule who is locked in a family contest with her relative Sunetra Pawar.

In Maharashtra 258 candidates are in fray in the third phase though all eyes are on Baramati seat where in a family contest Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule is pitted against Sunetra Pawar, wife of the veteran leader's estranged nephew and Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar.

The third phase of Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal will see four Muslim-majority constituencies going to the polls. It will also witness I.N.D.I.A. bloc partners at the national level — the TMC and the Left-Congress combine — fighting separately.

Amid heightened security with the deployment of 202 companies of Central forces and more than 60,000 personnel of police force and District Reserve Guard, the remaining seven Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh will vote in the third phase with 168 candidates in the fray. The main contest lies between the BJP, which had won 10 out of 11 seats in the state in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 general elections. In 2019, the BJP bagged nine constituencies and Congress 2.

In Karnataka, voting will take place for the 14 remaining seats. Here it is going to be a straight fight between the Congress and BJP in Parliamentary segments in the northern districts. The JD (S) is not contesting in these seats and is supporting the BJP. The main contestants are former chief ministers Basavaraj Bommai (Haveri) and Jagadish Shettar (Balgaum), Union ministers Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and Bhagwanth Khuba (Bidar) and Karnataka BJP chief B.S. Raghavendra (all BJP); Congress' Geetha Shivrajkumar (Shimoga), wife of actor Shivrajkumar and daughter of former CM S. Bangarappa, and AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge's son-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani (Gulbarga).

Ten parliamentary constituencies of Uttar Pradesh will go to polls with all eyes on Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav's family members.

Akshaya Yadav, son of Ram Gopal Yadav, the national principal general secretary of SP, will try to reclaim the Firozabad seat, which he had won in 2014.