Final Phase Of Polls Today, PM Modi Among Key Candidates
The country will witness pitched electoral battles in the final phase of the Lok Sabha polls today, with 10.17 crore people across seven states and a union territory voting to elect its next Union government. The most closely watched seats among these are Varanasi and Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh; Patna Sahib and Patiliputra in Bihar; Gurdaspur and Amritsar in Punjab; and nine in West Bengal that the BJP hopes to wrest to compensate for perceived losses in the Hindi heartland. BJP and Trinamool Congress workers had clashed in the eastern state earlier this week, following which the Election Commission cut short electoral campaigning amid protests by opposition parties. Among the main contestants in this phase of the election is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be fighting to retain his parliamentary seat of Varanasi. Over 10.1 crore voters will decide the fate of 918 candidates including PM Modi. Punjab has 13 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Aam Aadmi Party had won four seats each with vote shares of 26.4 per cent and 24.5 per cent, respectively. The Indian National Congress had won three seats by polling 33.2 per cent votes. The Bharatiya Janata Party had secured 8.8 per cent votes and taken two seats. At the time of the previous general elections in 2014, Punjab had a total of 19,607,992 registered electors, of whom 70.63 per cent, or 13,849,496, exercised their right to franchise across 22,019 polling stations to choose their 13 Members of Parliament from among 253 candidates. Punjab has 117 Assembly constituencies. In the previous Assembly elections, held in 2017, the Indian National Congress had bagged 77 of those seats with a vote share 38.8 per cent. The Aam Aadmi Party had won 20 with 23.9 per cent votes, while the SAD-BJP combine had together won 18 seats by polling 30.8 per cent votes. At present, Captain Amarinder Singh of the Indian National Congress is the chief minister of Punjab. -PTC News Watch more videos on our Youtube Channel -
