In the second phase of Lok Sabha elections, elections will be held on 88 seats in 12 states and one union territory on Friday. Voting is scheduled from 7 am to 6:00 pm. Earlier, voting was to be held on 89 seats but due to the death of a BSP candidate in the Betul seat of Madhya Pradesh, the election was postponed. Now voting will be held here on May 7.
Fate of many veterans to be decided today
The fate of many veterans will be decided in the second phase, among them Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, Venugopal, Arun Govil, HD Kumar Swamy, Hema Malini, Tejashwi Surya, Pappu Yadav, Om Birla, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Bhupesh Baghel, Danish Ali, BJP’s Atul Garg from Ghaziabad and Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Buddha Nagar.
Rahul Gandhi contesting from Wayanad
Last time, Rahul Gandhi had won from Wayanad with a record number of votes. This time his contest is against CPI’s Annie Raja and BJP leader K Surendran.
Annie Raja is a member of the National Executive of CPI. Annie is the wife of party general secretary D Raja. She is also the General Secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women. Surendran is the BJP state president.
Hema Malini and Arun Govil are contesting elections
Hema Malini and Arun Govil’s fate will also be on the line on the day 2 of 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.
On one hand where Hema Malini has already won as an member of parliament two times before this for the BJP, Arun govil has been given the ticket for the first time and he will make his political debut with these elections.
Hema Malini has reached Lok Sabha twice from Mathura Lok Sabha seat. Hema had defeated RLD’s Jayant Choudhary in 2014 and Kunwar Narendra Singh of SP-BSP-RLD alliance in 2019 with a big margin. This time Hema Malini is contesting against Mukesh Dhangar of Congress.
Heat wave expected in many states during voting
In the second phase, lakhs of voters may have to face scorching heat and loo at the time of voting. The Indian Meteorological Department has issued a heat wave warning in parts of West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh for the next 5 days. Red alert has been issued for West Bengal, Orissa and orange alert for parts of Bihar, Karnataka. We request all the voters to take regular care of their health along with following their voting religion and keep a water bottle with them while voting.
In several polling stations of Banka, Madhepura, Khagaria and Munger constituencies in Bihar, polling time was extended till 6 pm for the convenience of voters in the extreme weather conditions and scorching heat.
More about the second phase polls
In the second phase, a total of 15.88 crore voters are going to participate in the voting at 1.67 lakh polling stations. Of these, there are 8.08 crore men, 7.8 crore women and 5929 third gender voters.
The 13 states where voting will be held are – Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Rajasthan, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir.
-Rahul Dubey