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Lok Sabha elections 2019| Phase 5: All you need to know
People in seven states will cast their votes in the fifth phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections. This is the phase which will witness voting in some of the most keenly watched seats including Amethi and Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh.
Voting for the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections will take place on May 6 starting 7 am in 51 seats, making it the phase with the lowest number of constituencies going to the hustings. People in seven states will cast their votes in the fifth phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections.
This is also the phase which will witness voting in some of the most keenly watched seats including Amethi and Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh.
In Amethi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi will be looking to retain the seat even as BJP’s candidate Smriti Irani will be looking to dethrone him. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi defeated Irani and had romped home with a victory margin of more than 1 lakh votes. This time around, Irani is confident of a victory on the basis of the work she has done in the long-time Congress bastion.
At the same time, Rae Bareli, from where Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi is the sitting MP and the party’s candidate, the contest is between Sonia Gandhi and former Congressman Dinesh Pratap Singh who switched the the BJP recently. The BJP opted to field Singh in place of its 2014 Lok Sabha candidate Ajay Agarwal, a Supreme Court lawyer.
Apart from these two key seats in UP, the BJP will also go up against the mahagathbandhan of the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party on seven seats. Statewide, 14 seats will go to polls in the fifth phase. If the vote share of the SP and BSP are taken in to account, the fifth phase will be a tough one for the BJP.
Congress’s Jitin Prasada is likely to face a tough battle in facing a tough battle in Dhaurhara, a seat he has represented twice in the past. Another senior leader P.L. Punia’s son Tanuj is locked in a multi-cornered battle in Barabanki.
In Bihar, caste, more than the Modi or Nitish factor, will play a crucial role, and the National Democratic Alliance is banking on that to help it achieve victory. In the five seats in Bihar that go to polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections, the stake is high for the NDA to win all the seats. In the 2014 elections, the BJP had won three of the five seats - Saran, Muzaffarpur and Madhubani. Its allies the Lok Janshakti Party and the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) had won the Hajipur and Sitamarhi seats. The ruling NDA has made every possible move for the right caste equation that will play a dominant role over the issue of development. In the previous election, a fractured opposition and divided votes had worked in the NDA’s favour. At the same time, the RJD-led opposition grand alliance will be looking to spoil the pitch for the NDA. Interestingly, it is for the first time in four decades that Ram Vilas Paswan will not be contesting the elections from Hajipur.
In the northernmost state of Jammu and Kashmir, the Ladakh Lok Sabha seat will go to polls on Monday. The BJP has been working hard here to try and retain the seat and has fielded the Leh Hill Council Chief Executive Councillor Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, while the Congress has fielded the Council’s former CEC Rigzin Spalbar.
The four seats that are going to polls in Jharkhand will see the fates of some key players of the state being sealed. Among them is former chief minister Babulal Marandi of the JVM(P), who is contesting from Koderma. BJP’s Annapurna Devi will go up against Marandi from Koderma, and the CPI(ML)’s Rajkumar Yadav.
In Ranchi, the contest will be between Subodhkant Sahai of the Congress and Sanjay Seth of the BJP, and sitting MP Ramtahal Chowdhary. Chowdhary has considerable influence in the constituency and may well retain the seat.
In Khunti, former CM Arjun Munda is testing his mettle, while in Hazaraibagh sitting MP Jayant Sinha will go up against Bhuneshwar Mehta of the CPI and Gopal Sahu of the Congress.
In Madhya Pradesh, which will see its second phase of polling and during which seven seats will go to poll, Union minister Virendra Singh Khatik and BJP MP Prahlad Patel are in the fray to be reelected.
Khatik is BJP’s man in Tikamgarh, while Patel is running from Damoh against Congress’s Kiran Ahirwar and Pratap Singh Lodhi, respectively.
All the seven seats in MP’s Bundelkhand region are currently held by the BJP and the Congress has left no stone unturned to try and wrest some of the seats. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the Congress had won 2 seats in the state, while the BJP had romped home with 27 seats in its kitty.
In West Bengal, which recently witnessed the might of Cyclone Fani, seven Lok Sabha seats across three districts will go to polls in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Monday.
The main parties that are in the fray in this phase in the state are the Trinamool Congress, the BJP, the Congress and the Left front member CPI(M).
In the Bangaon (SC) seat, the TMC has fielded Mamata Thakur against BJP’s Shantanu Thakur, who suffered a head injury in an accident on Friday. The CPI(M) has nominated Alakesh Das, while the Congress has fielded Sourav Prosad.
In Barrackpore, the TMC has fielded Dinesh Trivedi against BJP’’s Arjun Singh who defected from the TMC ahead of the polls. Footballer-turned-politician Prasun Banerjee of the TMC will lock horns with BJP’s Rantidev Sengupta from Howrah, while TMC’s Sajda Ahmed will go up against BJP’s Joy Banerjee in Uluberia.
TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee is contesting from Sreerampur against BJP’s Debjit Sarkar.
The counting of votes will take place on May 23.
