Agencies
New Delhi, Apr 9: Fasten your seat belts. The high-voltage fight in Elections 2014 reaches the Hindi heartland and some key states across the country on Thursday.
After the first two phases in the northeast, 91 constituencies in 14 states/Union Territories vote in the third phase, sealing the fate of heavyweights such as Kamal Nath (Chhindwara), Meira Kumar (Sasaram) and Nitin Gadkari (Nagpur), among others.
The nine-phased Lok Sabha elections began on April 7 and will conclude on May 12.
In 2009, the Congress had won 45 of these 91 seats, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had bagged 13. The BJP is upbeat this time, riding high on opinion polls.
Polling will be held in the sugarcane belts of western Uttar Pradesh, the buzzing booths of Delhi, the drought and hailstorm-hit Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, the Vindhya region of Madhya Pradesh, the plains of Jammu, the politically-charged Kerala and the Maoist-affected belts of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
Seven Union ministers including Kapil Sibal, Kamal Nath and Shashi Tharoor (all of Congress), Ajit Singh of RLD, and former army chief VK Singh and Harsh Vardhan (both BJP) are the key nominees among the 1,418 candidates in the fray in Thursday's round.
Ten of the 80 constituencies in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh will go to polls and they include communally-sensitive and riot-hit Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Kairana, Aligarh, Bijnor, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautambudh Nagar and Bulandshahar.
The world's biggest vote will put to test the apparently unshakeable Naveen Patnaik in Odisha, the revamped political dynamics in Bihar after Janata Dal (United) snapped ties with the BJP, and Haryana, where polling finishes in one go.
Other prominent faces contesting in the third phase on April 10 are former Mumbai police commissioner Satyapal Singh (BJP) in Baghpat, recent RLD entrant actress-politician Jaya Prada (Bijnor), film stars Nagma (Meerut) and Raj Babbar (Ghaziabad-both Cong), AAP's Shazia Ilmi and riots accused Kadir Rana (BSP) in Muzaffarnagar.
Polling will also be conducted in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshwadeep.
Seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi will go to polls in which an estimated 1.27 crore voters will decide the fate of a total of 150 candidates including Congress' minister Kapil Sibal, former minister Ajay Maken, Delhi BJP president Harsh Vardhan, former Delhi Congress chief JP Agarwal and Sandeep Dikshit, son of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, and BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi and Bhojpuri singer Manoj Tiwari.
The Aam Aadmi Party is trying to win over Delhi again and Shashi Tharoor is going for his second straight win from Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram.
The spotlight will also be on the equation between BJP leader Nitin Gadkari and Muslims in Nagpur and how actors Kirron Kher and Gul Panag are posing a tough challenge to former railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal in Chandigarh. |
