 "RaGa or NaMo? The much-watched Lok Sabha elections kick off today")
Will any one party get a simple majority or will there be a hung Parliament? Will it be Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi or a regional satrap who will head the next government? In over a month from now, we will know the answers to these pressing questions, after India’s 81 crore voters will decide which 545 candidates will go to the Lok Sabha.
The election will begin relatively calmly with two states going to the polls to elect legislators for 6 constituencies. Five seats in Assam and one seat in Tripura will go the polls today with over 76 lakh voters expected to cast their ballot.
[caption id=“attachment_1468029” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Election commission officials with EVMs. PTI[/caption]
In the state of Assam, where the Congress is in power, the grand old party will face off against the BJP, Trinamool Congress, AIUDF, AGP, AAP, SUCI, CPI(M), AIFB and SP, who will all be hoping to take advantage of the anti-incumbency against the United Progressive alliance.
The five constituencies which will go to the polls today are Tezpur, Koliabor, Jorhat, Dibrugarh and Lakhimpur.
An electorate of 64,41,634, including 31,20,067 women, will cast their vote in 8,588 polling stations and will have to choose between a list of candidates that features former ministers and rising leaders.
The 51 candidates in the fray for the five seats include 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 for the Congress.
Congress rebel, and now an independent candidate, Moni Kumar Subba will be joining other opposition candidates like BJP state unit chief Sorbananda Sonowal and AGP’s candidates Arun Kumar Sarma, Pradip Hazarika and Joseph Toppo.
For the seat of Tripura West, there is expected to be a multi-cornered contest between the CPM, Congress, TMC and BJP.
Among the 13 candidates, major contestants in the fray include are CPM’s Shankar Prasad Dutta, Congress’ Arunoday Saha, BJP’s state unit chief Sudhindra Dasgupta, and chairman of the state unit of TMC Ratan Chakraborty.
The CPI(M) has won the seat ten out of 15 times between 1952 and 2009. Since 1996, the CPI(M) has consistently won this seat.
Of the 12,46,794 voters for this seat 6,34,702 are men and the remaining women. Altogether 1,605 polling stations have been set up for the constituency of which two have been identified as very
vulnerable and 486 as vulnerable.
In light of this the Election Commission has deployed an additional 35 companies of security forces along with the state police and the BSF has also deployed additional forces along the India-Bangladesh border.
Given their past record of efficiently conducting polls, the Election Commission also has nine all-women polling stations for the constituency.
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