Lok Sabha Elections LIVE: 'Priyanka Gandhi should have contested elections,' Congress chief Kharge says

More than 1.6 crore voters will decide the fate of 134 candidates in the final phase of Lok Sabha elections in Bihar on Saturday when eight seats will go to the polls.

Several high profile candidates are in the fray for the eight seats -- Patna Sahib, which covers the state capital, Patliputra that comprises the rural outskirts, Arrah, Karakat, Jehanabad, Buxar, Nalanda and Jehanabad.

Stakes are particularly high for the BJP in the final phase as it seeks to retain five of these seats, which made up for more than a quarter of its state-wide tally of 17.

Union minister RK Singh is aiming at a hat-trick from Arrah, where his principal challenger is Sudama Prasad, a sitting MLA of the CPI(ML) Liberation which has expanded its footprints in the state rapidly ever since it allied with the RJD and the Congress ahead of assembly polls and came up with best ever performance of 12 seats.

Total number of electorate for all the eight parliamentary constituencies is 1.62 crore, including 77.02 lakh women.

Polling will take place at 16,634 polling stations, of which only 3,885 are situated in urban areas, nearly half of these (1,657) in Patna Sahib alone.

Patna Sahib also has the largest electorate (22.90 lakh) though it is the smallest in terms of area, spread across only 641.41 sq km.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that the party's General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi should have made her election debut in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Speaking to NDTV, Kharge explained that the party discussed the possibilty of Priyanka contesting from Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli, a constituency vacated by her mother Sonia Gandhi.

Making another bold claim before the election results are declared, Kharge said his choice for the prime minister's office would be Rahul Gandhi. "He is my choice and he represents the youth, and length and breadth of the country," Kharge said in the interview.

Law enforcement agencies have seized unaccounted cash, liquor and valuables worth Rs 801.47 crore so far since the Model Code of Conduct came into force, said Punjab Chief Electoral Officer Sibin C on Friday.

He said the total seizures comprised narcotics worth Rs 716.78 crore, Rs 26.89 crore unaccounted cash, liquor worth Rs 26.75 crore, precious metals worth Rs 23.86 crore and freebies worth Rs 7.17 crore.

The Punjab CEO said that in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the seizures were to the tune of Rs 284 crore.

Polling for 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab will be held on June 1.

Less than 10% of the candidates contesting in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections are women, according to an analysis of data shared by the poll rights body Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

Of the 8,337 candidates analysed, only 797 are women, representing a mere 9.5% of the total candidates contesting across the seven phases of the elections.

This is the first election since the passage of the women's reservation bill to reserve one-third of seats in Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, reviving a bill pending for 27 years for want of consensus among parties. The bill is yet to come into effect.

During the first phase of the elections, out of 1,618 candidates, only 135 were women.

This pattern continued in the subsequent phases, with women candidates remaining a small fraction of the total.

Phase 2 saw 1,192 candidates of which affidavits of 1,198 candidates were analysed and as many as 100 were women.

Phase 3 had 1,352 candidates, including 123 women and 244 with criminal cases.

In phase 4, affidavits of 1,710 out of 1,717 candidates were analysed and 170 were women.

Phase 5 had the fewest candidates at 695, with 82 women, while in phase 6, affidavits of 866 out of 869 candidates were analysed, and there were 92 women.

In phase 7, there will be 904 candidates candidates, with only 95 women.

This significant gender imbalance has sparked criticism from political analysts and activists, who question why political parties are waiting for the women's reservation bill to be implemented instead of proactively issuing tickets to women.

After a two-month-long campaign, the fate of 37 candidates for four Lok Sabha seats and 25 nominees in six Assembly bypolls in Himachal Pradesh would be sealed in voting machines on June 1.

The high-pitched campaign in the hill state, filled with rancour and insinuations, ended with two rallies of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath at Badsar and Mandi and a roadshow of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at Solan on Thursday. Leaders and workers of political parties swarmed across the state for door-to-door canvassing in a last-ditch attempt to woo the voters.

Besides the elections to the four Lok Sabha seats of Hamirpur, Mandi, Kangra and Shimla, bypolls are being held in six Assembly segments -- Sujanpur, Dharamshala, Lahaul and Spiti, Barsar, Gagret and Kutlehar.

The six Assembly seats fell vacant following the disqualification of Congress rebels for defying a party whip to vote in favour of the government during the budget. These legislators voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Rajya Sabha polls on February 29, later joined the saffron party and are contesting the bypolls on BJP tickets from their respective Assembly segments.

Thirteen Lok Sabha seats, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Varanasi, will go to polls in the last and seventh phase of the general elections on Saturday.

Polling in the state, which sends 80 members to the Lower House of Parliament, was held in all seven phases of the election.

The parliamentary seats where polling will take place are Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon (SC), Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Robertsganj (SC), spread across 11 districts.

Uttar Pradesh is a seeing a direct contest between the BJP-led NDA and the coalition of INDIA bloc members Samajwadi Party and Congress.

Besides Prime Minister Modi, who is a seeking a third term from Varanasi, there are 143 candidates in the fray.

Among the prominent Lok Sabha seats are Varanasi, Gorakhpur, which has been represented by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath five times, Chandauli, Maharajganj and Mirzapur from where Union ministers Mahendra Nath Pandey, Pankaj Chaudhary and Anupriya Patel are contesting, respectively, Ghazipur from where the late Mukhtar Ansari's brother Afzal Ansari is in the fray and Ballia from where former prime minister Chandrashekhar's son Neeraj Shekhar is contesting. Campaigning for the 13 seats in Uttar Pradesh ended on Thursday evening.

Despite the 2024 Lok Sabha elections largely revolving around Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his poll narratives, one constituency in West Bengal is expected to vote around the politics that Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee embodies.

The truly cosmopolitan seat of Kolkata Dakshin is dominated by the quintessential Bengali “bhadralok” community and is home to the chief minister. It has remained loyal to the leader since 1991, for an unbroken 33 years, the first seven of which were during Banerjee’s stint as a Congress leader.

In fact, Kolkata Dakshin forms the cherry on the Trinamool pie of the cluster of nine south Bengal seats voting in the final phase on June 1 where, with the sole exception of Jaynagar, no opposition parties have managed to put a dent since 2009, two years prior to Banerjee’s assent to state power.

In Jaynagar, TMC’s winning streak has remained unhindered since 2014.

Political observers find no reason to believe that Banerjee would be removed from the centre stage of the south Kolkata voters’ minds even in this edition of the polls, regardless of who the TMC candidate for the seat is or who the electors choose to vote for, despite the sharply polarised political theatre of Bengal replete with scopious set of twists and turns.

Simply put, the dominating question at the grassroots is whether the volley of allegations related to corruption and coercion raked up by the opposition against the Trinamool would obfuscate the charisma and charm that Banerjee still holds among her followers.

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea seeking a direction to the Election Commission of India to hold re-polling in certain booths of Bihar's Munger constituency.

A vacation bench of Justices S C Sharma and P B Varale asked the petitioner to approach the high court.

"Why don't you go to the HC? The high courts are not closed in this country," the bench said.

The counsel for the petitioner alleged that huge rigging and booth capturing took place in the elections in Munger with the connivance of the local administration.

The top court said it was not inclined to entertain the matter after which the petitioner withdrew the plea.

The matter was dismissed as withdrawn.

The top court was hearing a plea filed by RJD candidate Kumari Anita seeking a direction to the poll panel to conduct re-polling in 45 booths in Munger.

The plea alleged serious manipulation, booth capturing and rigging by JD(U) workers with the help of officials.

It also sought direction to remove District Election officer, Munger, Dr Avaneesh Kumar Singh, from all administrative responsibilities. 

Polling for 13 Lok Sabha constituencies in Punjab and the lone Chandigarh seat will be held on Saturday, with INDIA bloc allies Congress and AAP contesting separately and the SAD and BJP also deciding to test the poll waters alone.

Prominent candidates in the fray are four-time MP Preneet Kaur, former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, three-time MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Ravneet Singh Bittu.

The BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal are contesting the Lok Sabha polls on their own for the first time since 1996 while two INDIA bloc parties - the Congress and AAP have fielded their own candidates.

The Sukhbir Badal-led party walked out of the NDA in 2020 over the now-repealed farm laws.

Besides the Congress, AAP, SAD and the BJP, two other parties --Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and the Bahujan Samaj Party have also fielded their candidates.

Among the prominent faces, BJP nominee and four-time MP Preneet Kaur is seeking re-election from the Patiala parliamentary constituency.

Three-time MP and SAD's Harsimrat Kaur Badal and BJP's Parampal Kaur Sidhu, a former IAS officer, are trying their luck from Bathinda while former CM and Congress candidate Channi and BJP nominee Sushil Rinku are in the fray from Jalandhar reserve constituency.

Former deputy chief minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and BJP candidate Dinesh Babbu are fighting from Gurdaspur.

Punjab Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring is contesting against BJP's Ravneet Singh Bittu from Ludhiana.

Radical Sikh preacher Amritpal Singh, who is lodged in Assam's Dibrugarh jail under the National Security Act, is fighting from Khadoor Sahib while former diplomat and BJP nominee Taranjit Singh Sandhu and Congress candidate Gurjeet Singh Aujla are contesting from Amritsar.

As the voting date inches closer, politicians in Himachal Pradesh are letting go of no opportunity in trolling their rivals, more often than not choosing as their weapon the social media and its memetic powers.

A scramble for gaffes is on between the two key political parties in the fray here – Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party –, whose followers have been posting slip-ups and blunders of their rivals, in some cases, to cut them down to size, in others, to bring to fore internal cracks.

A peep into the official accounts of both parties reveals that they are big on using bytes of the general public, especially those with a flair for a good rant.

War rooms have been set up for cyber-rattling to catch opponents on the wrong foot.

For instance, the BJP has uploaded a video showing Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge mispronouncing the name of the town where he was addressing a rally, as well as the names of the party colleagues from the state.

Congress, in return, ran with a video of BJP's Mandi Lok Sabha candidate Kangana Ranaut, which shows her saying "jab hathi chalta hai to kutte bhonkte hain" (the elephant keeps walking as the dogs keeps barking), when she was asked if it bothers her that some of her party mates were not comfortable with her.