Since 7 am on Saturday, voters have been casting their ballots to decide the fate of 904 candidates, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, across 57 seats in seven states and one Union Territory in this final phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.
In his poll day message, the PM urged voters to vote in large numbers. He hoped that young and women voters would exercise their franchise in record numbers, encouraging everyone to work together to make democracy more vibrant and participative.
Today, voters are casting their ballots in the seventh phase across several states: all 13 seats in Punjab, 13 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 9 seats in West Bengal, 8 seats in Bihar, all 4 seats in Himachal Pradesh, 3 seats in Jharkhand, 6 seats in Odisha, and the single seat in Chandigarh Union Territory.
Voting began at 7 am. Besides PM Modi, today’s candidates include BJP leaders Kangana Ranaut, Ravi Kishan, and Anurag Thakur, Congress leader Vikramaditya Singh, RJD leader Misa Bharti, and TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, among others.
Elections are also taking place for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha alongside the Lok Sabha polls, with vote counting scheduled for June 4. Over 10 crore electors, including 5.24 crore men, 4.82 crore women, and 3,574 third-gender voters, are eligible to vote in today’s phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Election Commission has deployed about 10.9 lakh polling officials across 1.09 lakh polling stations.
Reflecting on the Lok Sabha Election of 2019
In the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 25 of the 57 seats voting in the seventh phase today, while the Congress managed to secure only eight of these seats.
Voter turnout in the sixth phase of polling on May 25 was 63.37 percent, a slight dip from the 2019 turnout of 64.4 percent. In the fifth phase held on May 20, the turnout was 62.15 percent, higher than the 2019 polling for the same seats, which was 61.82 percent.
The Election Commission of India recorded a 69.16 percent voter turnout in the fourth phase of polling on May 13. The third phase on May 7 saw a turnout of 65.68 percent. In the second phase held on April 26, the turnout was 66.71 percent, while the first phase on April 19 saw a turnout of 66.1 percent.
Today’s polling marks the end of the world’s largest polling marathon, which began on April 19 and has already covered six phases and 486 Lok Sabha seats. The vote counting will take place on June 4. The Lok Sabha Elections 2024, held over 44 days between April 19 and June 1, are the second-longest elections in India’s history, following the first general elections held in 1951-52.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), aiming for a record third term under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has set a target of winning 400 seats in this election. Opposition parties, led by the Congress under the INDIA bloc banner, are challenging the ruling alliance.
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