Till 5 pm on Tuesday, 60.19% of voters had exercised their franchise in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections across 93 constituencies in 11 states and Union territories with the day witnessing intermittent violence in West Bengal. Assam saw the highest voter participation with 74.86 percent turnout, closely followed by West Bengal at 73.93 percent. The lowest turnout, on the other hand, was registered in Maharashtra at 53.63%, marginally better than Bihar’s 56.01%.
On May 7, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that the Agniveer scheme would be repealed if the INDIA bloc came to power. He termed the scheme as “A brainchild of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, not the Army.”.
Speaking at an election rally at Madhya Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he needs to win 400 Lok Sabha seats to prevent Congress from manipulating the OBC quota for electoral gain. “In the last five years, this coalition—be it NDA, the regional parties or independents—were just a few short of this number and it was this number that has enabled us to abrogate Article 370,” said Modi in Dhar.
The election process has been marred by sporadic violence in the state of West Bengal, with the worst occurrence in areas of Murshidabad and Jangipur between workers of TMC, BJP, and Congress-CPI(M).
More than 1,300 candidates are contesting in this phase. Major players include Union Ministers Amit Shah from Gandhinagar and Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vidisha.
The nomination papers were filed for the 13 seats going to polls in Punjab’s seventh phase of Lok Sabha elections, 4 in Himachal Pradesh, and 6 assembly segments holding by-elections. Nominations will be received up to May 14, with a pause on May 11 and 12 due to public holidays. Scrutiny of nominations will be on May 15, and withdrawal of candidatures can be done by May 17.
Four candidates have filed their nominations for the parliamentary elections from the Himachal Pradesh constituency.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday lashed out at the Election Commission, saying the commission had become a political puppet and was turning a “blind eye” to the alleged hate speeches by BJP leaders and reducing the Model Code of Conduct to a “Modi Code of Conduct.”
Re-polling has been ordered to be held on May 8 in one booth of Barmer, Rajasthan, over the allegations of breach of vote secrecy in the state’s polling during the second phase of elections. The action came following reports from the Election Commission observers. Chief Electoral Officer Praveen Gupta has suspended four officers of the polling team.