 "Lok Sabha elections 2024: The big fights to look out for in Phase 5")
India is advancing towards the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections. Voting will be held on 49 constituencies across six states and two Union Territories on 20 May.
As Monday evening ends, polling would have concluded in 376 out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. In the fifth phase, electors will decide the fate of 695 candidates.
Fourteen out of the 80 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh, 13 in Maharashtra, seven in West Bengal, five each in Bihar and Odisha, three in Jharkhand and one each in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh will go to polls.
Voting in only two phases will be left after 20 May. As we move closer to the general election results on 4 June, let’s look at the key candidates to watch out for in the fifth phase.
Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow
Defence minister Rajnath Singh is seeking a third term from the Lucknow Lok Sabha constituency. He won the seat in the 2019 polls by a 3.47 lakh margin.
Poonam Shatrughan Sinha of the Samajwadi Party (SP) had emerged as the first runner-up, clinching 285,724 votes, while the then Congress candidate Acharya Pramod Krishnam won 180,011 votes.
Uttar Pradesh’s capital has remained a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bastion for decades now. The late former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was a five-time MP from Lucknow since 1991.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThis time, Rajnath Singh is squaring off against INDIA bloc candidate Ravidas Mehrotra of the SP and Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Mohammad Sarwar Malik.
Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is in the fray from Rae Bareli. While speculations were high that he could again fight from Amethi, his candidature from Rae Bareli, which was held by his mother Sonia Gandhi before she shifted to Rajya Sabha in April, came as a surprise.
In the 2019 polls, Sonia Gandhi won the seat with 534,918 votes, trouncing the BJP candidate Dinesh Pratap Singh who bagged 367,740 votes. She was the lone Congress MP from Uttar Pradesh that year.
Rahul Gandhi, who also contested from Kerala’s Wayanad , will be facing the BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh and Thakur Prasad Yadav of the BSP.
Maharashtra’s Mumbai North
Voters in six constituencies across Mumbai will be exercising their franchise on 20 May.
Union minister Piyush Goyal is one of the prominent candidates in this phase. The BJP has fielded him from the Mumbai North seat against Congress’ Bhushan Patil.
Patil, who is the vice president of the Congress’ Mumbai unit, had fought from Borivali in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
In the 2019 polls, the BJP’s Gopal Shetty had registered a landslide victory from the Mumbai North constituency bagging 706,678 votes and 71.40 per cent votes. He had defeated Congress’ Urmila Matondkar who garnered 241,431 votes.
Notably, this is Goyal’s first Lok Sabha election.
Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi
Union minister and sitting Amethi MP Smriti Irani is vying to retain her seat. She had emerged as a giant killer in 2019 when she routed Rahul Gandhi from his family stronghold.
Irani had defeated the Gandhi scion by a margin of over 55,000 votes from Amethi.
This time, the Congress’ candidate for the high-profile Lok Sabha seat came as a surprise, with no Gandhis contesting from Amethi after over 25 years.
Irani is up against Kishori Lal Sharma, an old trusted aide of the Gandhi family, and BSP’s Nanhe Singh Chauhan.
Bihar’s Hajipur
Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), an ally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), is fighting from the Hajipur constituency, reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SCs).
His father the late Ram Vilas Paswan won from Hajipur in 1977 and went on to represent the seat eight more times before he moved to the Rajya Sabha.
आज हाजीपुर में अधिवक्ता साथियों से मुलाकात कर उनका सर्मथन मांगा। pic.twitter.com/tADvfemL8m
— युवा बिहारी चिराग पासवान (@iChiragPaswan) May 17, 2024
In the 2019 polls, the Hajipur seat was won by Chirag Paswan’s uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras by a margin of over two lakh votes against Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Shiv Chandra Ram.
Chirag had to fight hard to secure the Hajipur seat, which his uncle, who split the LJP into two, was unrelenting to give up. However, the NDA finally chose Ram Vilas’ son over Pashupati Paras.
For Chirag, the fight is to bolster his position as his father’s true heir by winning Hajipur, noted Indian Express. The two-time MP from Jamui is pitted against the RJD’s Shiv Chandra Ram.
Other seats
National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah is fighting from Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla Lok Sabha seat. He is challenged by Sajad Lone of the People’s Conference and Awami Ittehad Party chairman Abdul Rashid Sheikh, also known as Engineer Rashid.
Arvind Sawant of Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) is vying to get re-elected from the posh Mumbai South seat. He is contesting against Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena candidate and Byculla MLA Yamini Jadhav.
In Uttar Pradesh’s Kaiserganj, the BJP has fielded Karan Bhushan Singh, the youngest son of sitting MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh who is facing sexual harassment charges. He is up against Bhagat Ram Mishra of the SP and Narendra Pandey of the BSP.
RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter Rohini Acharya is making her electoral debut from Bihar’s Saran. She is seeking to wrest back her father’s erstwhile bastion from the BJP candidate and sitting MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
Congress’ Mumbai unit chief, Varsha Gaikwad is testing her luck from the Mumbai North-Central constituency. She is contesting against the BJP’s candidate senior criminal lawyer Ujjwal Nikam. Advocate Ramzan Choudhary of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi’s Satish Belamkar and actor Ajaz Khan are also in the fray.
BJP’s Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti is aiming to secure Uttar Pradesh’s Fatehpur for a third term.
The SP has given a ticket to Naresh Uttam Patel from the seat.
With inputs from agencies
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
 "Russian drones over Poland: Trump’s tepid reaction a wake-up call for Nato?")
 "As Russia pushes east, Ukraine faces mounting pressure to defend its heartland")
 "Why Mossad was not on board with Israel’s strike on Hamas in Qatar")
 "Turkey: Erdogan's police arrest opposition mayor Hasan Mutlu, dozens officials in corruption probe")
