Patna, May 8: High turnout was registered in the penultimate phase of the Lok Sabha election to 64 constituencies on Wednesday in which the fate of 1,737 candidates, including Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, were sealed.
One person was killed when police opened fire outside a polling booth in Bihar’s Sitamarhi district in a bid to prevent its capture.
Two key battleground states Bihar (where seven constituencies went to polls) and Uttar Pradesh (15 seats) recorded turnouts of 58 and 55.52 per cent, respectively. The Congress hopes to retain as many seats as possible in constituencies coming under eighth phase in the face of a strong Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) seeking to hold on to their Muslim-OBC-Dalit vote base. With Wednesday’s polls, voting has been completed in 502 of the total 543 constituencies and the remaining 41 seats will go to polls in the last phase on May 12.
The focus was on Amethi, where Rahul is contesting for the third time, which recorded 55.2 per cent polling. Rahul, who has represented the seat since 2004, toured polling booths in Amethi on the voting day for the first time, apparently in the face of a tough challenge posed by his rivals Smriti Irani of the BJP and Kumar Vishwas of the AAP.
In neighbouring Sultanpur constituency, where Rahul’s cousin and BJP’s Varun Gandhi is in fray, 57.2 per cent voters cast their votes.
Barring sporadic clashes between workers of YSR Congress and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and alleged attacks on policemen in Rayalaseema districts, polling was largely peaceful in Seemandhra where Congress is battling hard to repeat its 2009 impressive show post bifurcation.
Prominent among the 118 candidates in Bihar were LJP chief Ramvilas Paswan from Hajipur and RJD candidate Rabri Devi from Saran.
In West Bengal, notable among the 72 nominees are nine-time CPM MP Basudeb Acharia facing the challenge of actress Moon Moon Sen of the TMC?from Bankura.
Two seats in Jammu and Kashmir registered a turnout of close to 50 per cent.
Baramulla Lok Sabha seat, where several incidents of militant violence have been reported since Tuesday and separatists gave a poll boycott call, recorded a turnout of 39.6 per cent.
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