Worlds biggest Democracy Fare begins

New Delhi: The world’s biggest election – to elect 543 members to the Lok Sabha – is just on. The voting began on Monday in six constituencies, one in Tripura and five in Assam.  

A vibrant social media, young leaders, and an unconventional party is the highlight of the sixteenth Lok Sabha elections. Narendra Modi, BJP’s leading prime ministerial candidate, is 63, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, 43. The other contenders for the coveted post, Jayalalithaa is 66, and her Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee, 59. The unconventional of them all, Arvind Kejriwal is 45.  

Polling will be held in nine phases over the next 36 days and votes will be counted on May 16. A staggering 81.4 crore voters are eligible to vote at 930,000 polling stations across the country.

This election thus raises the prospect of a leader born after Independence becoming the Prime Minister.

Analysts see the real battle for control of Parliament being fought in two states, UP and Bihar, which account for 120 seats – UP sends 80 MPs and Bihar, 40. Other big states like Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu are expected to play a major role.

National capital Delhi votes on April 10.

BJP hinges its hopes on what they call a ‘Modi wave’; the others deny the existence of such a wave. But most pollsters predict, Advantage BJP.  

Guwahati: Among the 51 candidates, Union ministers Ranee Narah and Paban Singh Ghatowar, former Union minister and sitting MLA Bijoy Krishna Handique, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s son Gourav Gogoi and Bhupen Kumar Bora are for the Congress.

Congress rebel and Independent candidate Moni Kumar Subba is also in the fray.

For the BJP, its unit president Sorbananda Sonowal and Kamakhya Prasad Tasa are contesting while AGP’s nominees are Arun Kumar Sarma, Pradip Hazarika and Joseph Toppo.

An electorate of 64,41,634, including 31,20,067 women, are expected to exercise their franchise at 8,588 polling stations.

For the first time in the Northeast region and the third time in the country after Kashmir and Bihar, all polling booths have been declared smoking free.

Security measures have been tightened for the polls with additional companies of security forces deployed.

Agartala: Tripura West is witnessing a multi-cornered contest among CPI(M), Congress, TMC and BJP. Among the 13 candidates, major contestants are CPI(M)’s Shankar Prasad Dutta, secretary of the state unit of CITU, Congress’ Arunoday Saha, former vice-chancellor of Tripura Central University, Sudhindra Dasgupta, BJP’s state unit chief and chairman of the state unit of TMC and former minister Ratan Chakraborty.

CPI(M) has won the seat ten out of 15 times between 1952 and 2009. Since 1996

CPI(M) has consistently won this seat.

Of the 12,46,794 voters, 634702 are male and the remaining female. Altogether 1,605 polling stations have been set up for the constituency of which only two have been identified as very vulnerable, 486 as vulnerable.