Fifty one parliamentary constituencies (PCs) are voting today in the fifth, and the smallest phase of the 2019 general elections. Barring seven PCs in West Bengal and Anantnag and Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, this phase of election is entirely in Hindi speaking states.

FollowLIVE updates here.

A 2019 phase-wise classification of PCs by 2014 results shows that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its other National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners had the highest seat share in the PCs which are going to polls today.

The NDA won 41 out of the 51 seats in 2014, 27 more than its 2009 tally.

The BJP’s share in seats contested by the NDA was also highest in the seats that poll today. It fought all seats, except Hajipur and Sitamarhi in Bihar, going to polls and won 39 of them. The BJP is contesting the same 49 PCs in 2019 which it had contested in 2014.

It will not be easy for the BJP and its allies to replicate their 2014 performance in 2019.

The BJP won all 25 PCs in Rajasthan in the 2014 elections. Given the Congress victory in the 2018 assembly elections, a repeat seems unlikely.

A total of 12 constituencies in Rajasthan are going to polls on Monday.

In four of the six states (Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Jammu & Kashmir) other than Rajasthan where seats polling today are located, the BJP has either lost a recent assembly election or is faced with a more united opposition.

Seven out of the ten PCs polling today which the NDA could not win are in West Bengal. The party’s median vote share gap with the winner in these seven seats was 23.9%.

The other two, Rae Bareli and Amethi in Uttar Pradesh are being contested by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi with the tacit support of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party. Anantnag, where the three-phase polling will conclude today, is located in the Kashmir valley, where the BJP has not had much support until now.

First Published: May 06, 2019 06:22 IST