New Delhi :With 121 seats across 12 states voting in fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections, India is witnessing the biggest round of electoral exercise on April 17. With this phase the voting will cross the half-way mark in terms of seats in more than a month-long exercise. More than 25 bigwigs are trying their luck in Thursday’s fifth phase of polling.
Nandan Nilekani, Maneka Gandhi, former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, Union Minister Veerappa Moily, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Srikant Jena, Supriya Sule and Lalu Prasad’s eldest daughter Misa Bharti are amongst the 1,769 candidates in the fifth of the nine-phased elections.
Polling is taking place in all 28 seats in Karnataka, followed by Rajasthan (20), Maharashtra (19), Uttar Pradesh and Odisha (11 each), Madhya Pradesh (10), Bihar (7), Jharkhand (6), West Bengal (4), Chhattisgarh (3), Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur (1 each). So far polling has been held in 111 constituencies in four phases. In the last substantial round of 91 seats went to polls on April 10.
Key candidates in the fifth phase:
KARNATAKA
Nandan Nilekani v/s Ananthkumar – Bangalore South
HD Deve Gowda – Hassan
BS Yeddyurappa – Shimoga
B Sriramulu – Bellary
BIHAR
Shatrughan Sinha vs Kunal Singh Yadav in Patna Sahib
Misa Bharti from Patliputra
Ashish Ranjan Sinha (Congress) from Nalanda
JHARKHAND
Subodh Kant Sahay vs Amitabh Choudhary vs Ram Tahal Choudhary in Ranchi
Ajay Kumar vs Dineshanand Goswami in Jamshedpur
Jayant Sinha from Hazaribagh
MADHYA PRADESH
Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna
Narendra Singh Tomar (BJP) from Gwalior
Rachna Dhingra (AAP) vs Alok Sanjar (BJP) in Bhopal
MAHARASHTRA
Nanded – Ashok Chavan (Congress)
Gopinath Munde(BJP ) – Bheed
Supriya Sule (NCP)- Baramati
Sushil Kumar Shinde (Congress) – Solapur
Pune – Vishwajit Kadam – (Congress)
RAJASTHAN
Barmer – Jaswant Singh (Independent) v/s Colonel Sona Ram of BJP
Ajmer – Sachin Pilot of Congress
Jaipur rural – Rajyavardhan Rathore vs CP JOSHI
Sawai Madhopur – MD Azaruddin
Chitoragarh – Dr. Girija Vyas
CHHATTISGARH
Ajit Jogi from Mahasamund
Abhishek Singh from Rajnadgaon
West Bengal
Baichung Bhutia – TMC – Darjeeling
JAMMU & KASHMIR
Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad from Udhampur-Doda
ODISHA
Kendrapara – Jay Panda – BJD
