Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and other election material placed at a distribution centre, a day before voting in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Around 17.7 crore people will be eligible to vote in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections in 96 seats spread across ten states and Union Territories on Monday.
Polling will also be held in 175 Assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh and 28 seats in Odisha where the term of assemblies are ending in June.
According to the Election Commission, 1,717 candidates trying their luck in 96 Lok Sabha seats. All Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh (25) and Telangana (17) will go to polls on Monday besides constituencies in Uttar Pradesh (13), Maharashtra (11), Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal (8 each), Bihar (5), Odisha and Jharkhand (4 each) and Jammu and Kashmir (1).
Over 19 lakh polling officials have been deployed across 1.92 lakh polling stations for phase 4 polls. The EC said 364 Observers -- 126 General Observers, 70 Police Observers, 168 Expenditure Observers -- for the phase 4 have already reached their constituencies days before the polls.
So far, till phase 3 of the General Elections 2024, polling has concluded in 20 states and Union Territories where 283 seats went to polls. With the completion of phase 4, voting process in 23 states and Union Territories in which 379 seats are there will be complete.
Prominent candidates in phase 4 include Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj), Omar Abdullah (Srinagar), Giriraj Singh (Begusarai), Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (Baharampur), Mahua Moitra (Krishnanagar), Shatrughnan Sinha (Asansol), Asaduddin Owaisi (Hyderabad) and YS Sharmila (Kadappa).
The run up to the Phase 4 polling also saw the Election Commission and Opposition I.N.D.I.A. bloc entering into a spat over delay in release of voter turnout data with the former responding to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in strong words saying people will hold the doubts raised by him on the electoral process with “contempt”.
During the campaign for phase 4, the BJP and the Congress continued to be on attack mode with the Prime Minister being accused of resorting to communal rhetoric.
The BJP also used a report by the Economic Advisory Committee of Prime Minister on population which spoke about decreasing share of Hindu population and rising Muslim share to target Congress alleging that it would use it to give quota for the minority community.