India’s parliamentary elections, the world’s largest and longest, draws to a close tomorrow when an estimated 10.06 crore voters are expected to cast their votes in the last lap of voting in 57 constituencies spread across eight states and two union territories.
A total of 904 candidates, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are in fray in the seventh and final phase of voting which began on April 19.
The constituency to be watched most tomorrow is Varanasi, the Hindu holy town in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, where Modi is almost assured of defeating Congress’s Ajay Rai.
In a video message for Varanasi voters on the last day of campaign, Modi urged them to turn up at polling booths in record number, our New Delhi correspondent reports.
Among the other key candidates in the seventh phase are senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad in Patna Sahib constituency in Bihar, Omar Abdullah of Jammu and Kashmir National Conference in Baramulla against Sajad Gani Lone of Jammu and Kashmir People Conference and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee in Diamond Harbour.
Votes will be counted on June 4 and India is expected to have a new government in place by the middle of June.
Nearly 970 million voters — more than 10 percent of the world’s population — were eligible to elect 543 members to the Lok Sabha, the lower House of Parliament, for five years. Voting is already over in 486 spread over in 28 states and union territories.
All the three constituencies in Kolkata will also go to poll tomorrow including Kolkata Uttar, Kolkata Dakshin and Jadavpur where chief minister Mamata Banerjee pulled off the giant-killing feat of defeating Marxist veteran Somnath Chatterjee in 1984 catapulting her to prominence. This time, TV actress Saayoni Ghosh is making her parliamentary poll debut from there.
Besides Kolkata and Diamond Harbour, five other constituencies of West Bengal Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Joynagar and Mathurapur will vote tomorrow.
The poll fortunes of Trinamool veterans like Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Saugata Roy will be tested as will be BJP’s debutant Rekha Patra in Saneshkhali, a place which made headlines for the alleged atrocities on women by TMC local strongman Shahjahan Sheikh.
The results in the nine constituencies in Bengal will be a key for TMC’s dominance in southern part of the state in the face of challenge by BJP and Left-Congress the alliance.
