Polling began at 7am on Sunday for the penultimate round of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections with 59 constituencies across 7 states voting to pick their lawmakers, this includes all seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi.

Delhi is voting alongside 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 10 in Haryana, eights each in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, and four in Jharkhand.

It’s a high-stake round for the BJP and its allies as out of the 59 seats polling today, they hold 46, UPA has two and others 11.

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As polling started Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged young voters to vote in record numbers. “Yet another phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is here! Urging all those whose constituencies are polling in today’s sixth phase to go out and vote,” the Prime Minister tweeted.

“I hope youngsters are voting in record numbers. After all, their participation makes the polls even more special,” he wrote. The Prime Minister has tweeted ahead of every phase since the first one to remind voters to cast their franchise.

Among early voters were cricketer Virat Kohli and BJP’s Bhopal candidate Pragya Thakur, Delhi East candidate Gautam Gambhir.

Long queues were seen outside booths in Delhi, UP and West Bengal as people tried to beat the May heat. VVPAT glitches were reported from a few places in West Bengal.

Among the 979 candidates in the fray are Maneka Gandhi, Varun Gandhi, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, Dilip Ghosh, Meenakshi Lekhi (all BJP), Digvijaya Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sheila Dikshit, Ajay Maken, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kirti Azad (all Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Manas Bhunia (Trinamool).

Over 1.43 crore people in Delhi are eligible to vote in this election which will decide the fate of 164 candidates, of which 18 are women. There are 43 independent candidates.

While the BJP, which had won all seven seats in the 2014 polls, is keen to regain the turf, the Congress, that ended up at the third spot in the last Lok Sabha elections, is looking to bounce back. Delhi CEO Ranbir Singh has said all arrangements for voters have been made and paramilitary personnel have been deployed at critical polling stations to ensure smooth polling.

In Uttar Pradesh, the battlefield has now moved eastward, with constituencies such as Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Allahabad, Ambedkarnagar, Azamgarh, and Jaunpur voting today.

Of the 14 seats, the BJP had won all in 2014, barring Azamgarh, which was won by Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. This time, his son and party chief chief Akhilesh Yadav is contesting from here.

The BJP faces a tough challenge now that the SP has forged an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). It will be a triangular contest between the BJP, the SP-BSP alliance, and Congress in some seats.

In Haryana, the ruling BJP had won seven of the total 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2014, INLD won three, while Congress won two.

Not only will the BJP be looking to maintain, if not increase, its tally, 2019 will also be a prestige battle for the once- main opposition party, INLD, especially with splinter outfit, JJP, formed by Hisar MP Dushyant Chautala, in the fray.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Gwalior-Chambal region, besides parts of Bundelkhand and central Madhya Pradesh, are voting today.

The eight constituencies include four in the GwaliorChambal region — Gwalior, Guna, Morena and Bhind (a seat reserved for candidates from the Scheduled Caste categories)— and three are in central MP, including Bhopal, Vidisha and Rajgarh. The remaining seat is Sagar, which falls in Bundelkhand region.

In the 2014 elections, the BJP won all these seats, except Guna that was won by Congress general secretary Jyotiraditya Scindia. The saffron party won 27 of the 29 seats in the state. However, the December assembly elections put the Congress back in power after 15 years.

First Published: May 12, 2019 08:24 IST