Campaigning for the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election ended on May 18.
A total of 49 seats, including the high-profile constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli, will vote in this phase on May 20.
The campaigning saw high-pitched rhetoric by both the BJP and the INDIA bloc. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked the Congress, claiming that the UPA government had wanted to allocate 15% of the budget to Muslims, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge widened the gamut of poll guarantees of his party when he promised 10 kg of free grains to the poor instead of the five kg being given at present.
Mr. Modi, while campaigning in Uttar Pradesh on Friday, also claimed that the Congress and the Samajwadi Party will run a bulldozer over the Ram temple if elected to power, prompting the Congress to complain to the Election Commission on Saturday.
Of the 49 seats going to the polls on May 20, the BJP had won 32 in 2019, while the Congress got only Rae Bareli. This time, the BJP is contesting in 40 seats while the Congress has limited itself to just 18 seats, leaving the rest to its allies.
For this phase, which has the least number of constituencies going to the polls, 695 candidates, including 82 women, are in the fray.
Star candidates
Some of the star candidates include the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi from Rae Bareli, the BJP’s Smrti Irani from Amethi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal from Mumbai-North, Omar Abdullah from Baramulla and the RJD’s Rohini Acharya from Saran in Bihar.
Uttar Pradesh, which sends the largest number of MPs to Parliament, will see 14 seats voting in the fifth phase with the fate of five Union Ministers at stake. These seats include Congress pocket boroughs of Rae Bareli and Amethi. Faizabad, which includes Ayodhya, the nerve centre of the BJP’s Hindutva politics will also vote in this phase.
Congress leader Sonia Gandhi campaigned for Rahul Gandhi in Rae Bareli saying she was handing over her son to the people of Rae Bareli. “Rahul will not disappoint you,” she said.
In neighbouring Amethi, where Union Minister Smriti Irani is locked in a tight contest with the Congress’s K.L. Sharma, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi held street corner meetings in his support.
In the national capital, Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal was caught in another controversy as AAP Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal alleged assault by his personal assistant Bibhav Kumar who was arrested on Saturday.
All the seats in Mumbai are also going to polls in this phase.
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee ruffled some feathers in the INDIA bloc when she said her party would provide only outside support to the group if it forms the government though she later softened her stand.
With the fifth phase, the polling process in 25 States and Union Territories will be over. The next two phases will be on May 25 and June 1. Votes will be counted on June 4.
