The sixth phase of LS polling

24042014

Voters on Thursday turned up in good numbers in many of the 117 constituencies in 11 states and Union Territory of Puducherry in the sixth phase of Lok Sabha polls in which stakes are high for the Congress, BJP and number of other parties like AIADMK, DMK, NCP and Shiv Sena.

About 40 percent of the 180 million were eligible to vote on Thursday – in 201,735 polling centres in 11 states and Puducherry. The Election Commission said the entire exercise went on smoothly. However, in Assam, a policeman was killed in Kokrajhar constituency when a mob stoned security personnel.  Balloting was also low in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital where senior politicians, industrialists, Bollywood actors and the commoners stood in the same queues to vote. Actors who voted early asked fellow Indian to vote without fail. “I cast my vote. So must every Indian who is eligible. Be responsible,” actor John Abraham tweeted. But both in Mumbai and elsewhere in Maharasthra, where polling took place in 19 constituencies, Muslims came out in large numbers to vote amid BJP’s claims of a nationwide “Modi wave”. Actors Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan as well as Chief Minister Jayalalithaa were among those who voted early in Tamil Nadu, all of whose 39 seats went to the polls Thursday.  Both AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa and her West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress hope to garner most Lok Sabha seats in their states to play a major role in the event of a hung parliament.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew to Assam to vote, and claimed there was no “Modi wave” in the country.  Among the star contestants in the state are President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee (Jangipur). The states which saw polling Thursday were Tamil Nadu (39 seats), Maharashtra (19), Uttar Pradesh (12), Madhya Pradesh (10), Chattisgarh and Bihar (seven each), West Bengal and Assam (six each), Rajasthan (five) and Jharkhand (four) and Jammu and Kashmir as well as Puducherry (one each). In Varanasi, cheered by thousands of supporters, Modi filed his nomination papers for the Lok Sabha battle that will pit him against AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and Ajay Rai of the Congress. A mass of Bharatiya Janata Party activists, many waving party flags and sporting saffron caps, as well as residents walked with Modi as his open vehicle crawled through the streets to the district magistrate’s office.  With Thursday’s round of balloting — three more are to take place, and the results will be declared May 16 — the Lok Sabha election has ended in seven states.