New Delhi: Former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, BJP veteran Maneka Gandhi, former JNU students union leader Kanhaiya Kumar, actor turned politician Raj Babbar and late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri Swaraj are some of the prominent politicians whose fates will be sealed in ballot boxes on Saturday when voting for the sixth and penultimate phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha polls takes place.
In this phase, polling will be held for 58 parliamentary seats across eight states and Union territories. Haryana and Delhi will head to the polls, along with Bihar, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, which will continue with their polls in this phase. Polling for 42 Assembly constituencies for the Odisha state Legislative Assembly will also take place simultaneously.
In West Bengal, the Tamluk seat is witnessing a fierce battle between BJP candidate and former Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay and the creator of the “Khela Hobe” slogan for Trinamul Congress' 28-year-old Debangshu Bhattacharya. Sayan Banerjee is the CPI(M) candidate from here.
The Election Commission has directed concerned chief electoral officers and state machinery to take adequate measures against intense heatwaves or rainfall wherever predicted. The poll body has urged voters to end “urban apathy” and come out to vote.
“The Commission has called upon voters to turn out in greater numbers at polling stations and vote with responsibility and pride. Voters of parliamentary constituencies in urban centres like Delhi, Gurgaon and Faridabad are specially reminded about their right and duty to vote and break the trend of urban apathy,” the EC spokesperson said.
At the end of voting in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on May 20, the poll panel had lamented that constituencies in various cities such as Mumbai, Thane, Nashik and Lucknow have continued the trend of urban apathy as noticed in the 2019 polls.
Around 11.4 lakh polling officials have been deployed to handle about 11.13-crore voters across 1.14 lakh polling stations. Veteran leaders like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and BJP’s L.K. Advani had all voted in advance using a home voting facility last week ahead of polling in Delhi.
The EC said 20 special trains were deployed to ferry security personnel. In this phase, 184 observers have already reached their constituencies days before the polls. Additionally, special observers have been deployed in certain states.
A total of 2,222 flying squads, 2,295 static surveillance teams, 819 video surveillance teams and 569 video viewing teams are keeping surveillance round the clock to deal with any form of inducement of voters strictly and swiftly.
