In the second phase of Lok Sabha elections, voting will be held on 88 seats in different states of the country on Friday. In this phase, many veteran leaders of different political parties are in the fray. To decide the fate of these leaders, voters will register their decision in EVMs. In this phase, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor and BJP actor-turned-politician from Ramayan serial Arun Govil are among the prominent candidates. Along with this, BJP’s Hema Malini, Om Birla and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are trying their best to register victory for the third consecutive time from their respective constituencies.
Lok Sabha elections are to be held in seven phases. Under the first phase, voting was held on 102 seats in 21 states and union territories on last Friday, April 19, in which the voting percentage was approximately 65.50.
In the second phase of elections on Friday, all 20 seats in Kerala, 14 out of 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, seven seats in Madhya Pradesh, five seats each in Assam and Bihar. Voting is to be held on three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
Rahul Gandhi won by a huge margin
Rahul Gandhi is an MP from Wayanad, Kerala and is contesting elections from here for the second time. His competition was Annie Raja of Communist Party of India-CPI and BJP candidate K. Is from Surendran. In the 2019 elections, Rahul Gandhi won against his nearest rival PP Sunir of CPI by a huge margin of more than seven lakh votes. This time it is also being said about Rahul Gandhi that he will also contest elections from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. The talk of contesting elections from Amethi will definitely have an impact on Wayanad seat. Rahul is a strong candidate in Wayanad, but his victory margin may be less than in the previous elections.
Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor is hopeful that he will be able to retain the Thiruvananthapuram seat for the fourth time. He is facing competition from Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar of BJP and Panniyan Raveendran of CPI.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary K.C. Venugopal is returning to the Lok Sabha election field after 2014 and is a candidate from Alappuzha seat in Kerala. Winning this seat has become a battle of prestige for Congress.
In the 2019 elections, Congress had won 19 out of 20 seats in Kerala, one seat was won by the Left Democratic Front- LDF led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M). Congress wants to win this seat also.
Venugopal has not lost any major election in his political career. He won the Alappuzha Assembly seat for three consecutive terms in 1996, 2001 and 2006 and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Alappuzha in 2009 and 2014. In 2019, he did not contest the elections after the party made him the general secretary of AICC.
Hema Malini will score a hat-trick of victory in Mathura!
BJP candidate Hema Malini, who has been representing Mathura constituency since 2014, is contesting against Congress’ Mukesh Dhangar, while Om Birla, twice elected MP from Kota, is in the fray against Congress party’s Prahlad Gunjal. Karan Singh Uchiarada is standing on the Congress side against Union Minister Shekhawat, who is trying to win from Jodhpur seat for the third consecutive time.
Arun Govil, who became famous by playing the role of Lord Ram in the Ramayana serial, is the BJP candidate from Meerut Lok Sabha seat. The party has given him the ticket in place of three-time MP Rajendra Aggarwal. Govil is contesting against Bahujan Samaj Party-BSP’s Devvrat Kumar Tyagi and Samajwadi Party’s Sunita Verma.
An interesting contest is also being seen on Ghaziabad Lok Sabha seat. Here, MLA Atul Garg is contesting the elections from BJP. He is facing Congress’s Dolly Sharma and BSP candidate Nand Kishore Pundir. Ghaziabad seat has been with BJP for a long time. Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh have been MPs from here. BJP candidate from Gautam Buddha Nagar, Dr. Mahesh Chand Sharma is in the electoral battle to try his luck for the third time.
Outgoing MP from Bengaluru South and national president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, Tejasvi Surya will face Congress’s Soumya Reddy.
Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel is contesting elections from Rajnandgaon, which has been a BJP stronghold for more than 30 years. His competition is against BJP’s Santosh Pandey. Santosh Pandey had won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on behalf of BJP.
Congress’ new face Pankaj Ahirwar is in the fray against BJP leader Virendra Kumar Khatik, who is hoping to win from Tikamgarh seat of Madhya Pradesh for the fourth time. In the year 2019, Khatik defeated Congress’s Kiran Ahirwar by a margin of more than 3.48 lakh votes.
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Tags: 2024 Lok Sabha Elections, Loksabha Election 2024, Loksabha Elections, Mathura news, meerut news
FIRST PUBLISHED: April 25, 2024, 15:24 IST