LS polls | Phase 7: Key seats, battles; heavyweight candidates, including Modi

It’s been more than a month since India began voting to choose its next government and we are at the doors of the seventh and the FINAL phase. Voting is scheduled in 57 constituencies across eight states in the last phase of the polls on June 1.

With a total of 904 candidates in the fray, Phase 7 will witness political heavyweights, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi slugging it out in the electoral battlefield.

Besides Modi, who is contesting from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi Lok Sabha seat, other politicians who are seeking votes in this phase are actor and politician Ravi Kishan (Gorakhpur, BJP), Ravi Shankar Prasad (Patna Sahib, BJP), Baijayant Panda (Kendrapara, BJP), RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter Misa Bharti (Pataliputra, RJD), actor Kangana Ranaut (Mandi, BJP), Union minister Anurag Thakur (Hamirpur, BJP), former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi (Jalandhar, Congress), former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal (Bathinda, SAD), and Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee (Diamond Harbour, TMC).

Both Punjab and Himachal Pradesh are voting in a single phase. The bypolls to six seats in Himachal Pradesh, slated on the same day, will determine the fate of the Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu government: the Congress needs to win at least four of the seats to ensure its government does not fall.

The results will be declared on June 4.

Let’s take a look at the contentious seats and anticipated battles in the seventh phase of elections:

UTTAR PRADESH

Constituencies going to polls: 13 of 80 (Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon, Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Robertsganj)

The combined prestige and electoral sway of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath would be at stake as these 13 constituencies vote in the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha polls.

Modi is the incumbent MP and candidate from Varanasi, pitted against Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai, joint candidate of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress.

Gorakhpur has been the electoral fief of Adityanath, a constituency that the Uttar Pradesh chief minister represented for five terms before taking the seat of power in Lucknow; the seat is currently represented by actor Ravi Kishan, who is in the fray again as the BJP candidate against SP’s Kajal Nishad. As such, any upsets for the BJP in this round of polling across Uttar Pradesh’s Purvanchal will be hyped by the Opposition, irrespective of which way the overall results pan out.

The SP-Congress alliance hopes its pitch for socio-economic justice would resonate the most with voters of eastern Uttar Pradesh as this is among the most economically backward regions of the country, beset additionally with stark caste divisions. It is in this region that the BJP is dependant heavily on the incremental value that its allies such as Anupriya Patel’s Apna Dal, Sanjay Nishad’s NISHAD party and OP Rajbhar’s SBSP bring to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)’s electoral armoury.

Patel, a Union minister and Kurmi leader, is in the fray again from the Mirzapur seat and faces a stiff challenge from the SP’s Ramesh Bind while Rajbhar’s son, Arvind Rajbhar too is caught in a pitched battle against the SP’s Rajeev Rai.

Several political commentators have predicted the possibility of new social alignments developing in this region in the wake of the SP’s aggressive outreach to the OBCs and the Dalits, a formidable vote bank that had, over the past 10 years, swerved decisively towards the BJP. With socio-economic justice, price rise, joblessness and unrest over the Centre’s Agniveer scheme being major electoral planks raised by the INDIA partners, the BJP has had its task of retaining electoral hold over impoverished Purvanchal well cut out.

The contest in Ghazipur between incumbent MP and SP nominee Afzal Ansari and the BJP’s Paras Nath Rai will also be eagerly tracked. Afzal’s brother, gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari, had died of a cardiac arrest earlier this year while serving jail term. Ghazipur has been a stronghold of the Ansaris and the family has alleged that Mukhtar had been poisoned in jail as part of a BJP conspiracy to eliminate him.

PUNJAB

Constituencies going to polls:  All 13 (Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Khadoor Sahib, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Anandpur Sahib, Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib, Faridkot, Firozpur, Bathinda, Sangrur, Patiala)

The only state north of the Vindhyas that has evaded the BJP’s political dominance despite the Narendra Modi wave of 2014 and 2019 is set for a four-cornered contest on most of its 13 Lok Sabha constituencies. INDIA bloc constituents Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress may have allied for the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat, but the two parties decided to go solo in Punjab. Similarly, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which used to give the BJP political legitimacy in the state, has kept the saffron party at bay ever since it walked out of the NDA ahead of the 2022 Punjab Assembly polls in protest against the Centre’s controversial farm laws (scrapped since). As such, the four political parties have fielded candidates across all 13 seats of the state.

The Congress, which had won nine of the state’s 13 seats in 2019, had lost much of its electoral heft after the AAP romped to power in the state in 2022 with a brute majority of 92 seats in the 117-member Punjab Assembly. Subsequently, nearly the entire top rung of the Congress, including former chief minister Amarinder Singh and former state Congress chief Sunil Jakhar switched to the BJP. The AAP, too, has lost some of its sheen, given the poor law and order in the state and the controversies that the party’s frontline leadership has been mired in.

However, with the BJP still seen as an anti-farmer party in the state and the SAD struggling to set its house in order following the back-to-back poll routs since 2017, the poll contest in most Lok Sabha seats of Punjab is tipped to be primarily between the Congress and AAP. The BJP is hoping that its traditional vote bank in the state’s urban areas will, however, continue to stand behind the party while the leaders it has poached from other outfits will also deliver electoral triumphs.

The saffron party has fielded over half a dozen turncoats; including incumbent Patiala MP and Amarinder Singh’s wife Preneet Kaur in Patiala and sitting Ludhiana and Jalandhar MPs Ravneet Bittu (formerly with the Congress) and Sushil Kumar Rinku (formerly with the AAP), respectively.

HIMACHAL PRADESH

Constituencies going to polls: All 4 (Kangra, Mandi, Hamirpur, Shimla)

Assembly segments due for bypolls – 6 (Gagret, Dharamsala, Barsar, Lahaul & Spiti, Kutlehar and Sujanpur)

The only north Indian state where the Congress is currently in power accounts for just four Lok Sabha seats. Yet, the contest in Himachal Pradesh has turned extremely interesting due to the candidates fielded by the Congress and the BJP as well as the six assembly by-elections that will be held simultaneously on June 1 to decide if Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu retains power.

In the Rajya Sabha polls held in February this year, six Congress MLAs had cross-voted for the BJP nominee leading to the shock defeat of Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi. The six ‘rebels’ were later disqualified as MLAs, per provisions of the anti-defection law, as they had defied the party whip and failed to vote on the cut motion moved in the state assembly. All six rebels later joined the BJP and are now the saffron party’s candidates for the upcoming bypolls.

The Lok Sabha polls and the Assembly bypolls will be the first major test for Chief Minister Sukhu’s government. The Congress appears to be on a strong footing in the Assembly bypolls because of palpable anger among public against the BJP’s attempt at toppling the state government. The Congress needs to win a minimum of four of the six Assembly bypolls to ensure that its state government does not fall.

What is more interesting, though, is that this public anger, combined with voter unrest over price rise, growing unemployment, the Agniveer scheme (Himachal has traditionally been a major recruitment ground for the Armed Forces) as well as disaffection with the BJP among the state’s huge population of government employees and apple farmers, has boosted the Congress’s victory prospects in the Lok Sabha polls too.

Additionally, the Himachal polls have also attracted unprecedented media attention to the BJP nominating actor Kangna Ranaut as its candidate for the Mandi Lok Sabha seat. Ranaut is pitted against Vikramaditya Singh, a minister in the Sukhu government and son the late Virbhadra Singh, a former six-time chief minister of Himachal.

Union minister Anurag Thakur is in the electoral fray from his traditional Hamirpur constituency where the Congress has fielded Satpal Raizada. Four of the six assembly segments scheduled for bypolls – Sujanpur, Gagret, Barsar and Kutlehar – fall in the Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency while one each are in the Lok Sabha constituencies of Mandi (Lahaul and Spiti) and Kangra (Dharamsala).

In Kangra, Congress veteran Anand Sharma is facing his first ever Lok Sabha election after a nearly five decade-long career in politics. Sharma is pitted against another Lok Sabha poll debutant, the BJP’s Rajeev Bhardwaj. In the Scheduled Caste reserved seat of Shimla, the Congress has fielded its first term MLA Vinod Sultanpuri, son of former six-term Shimla MP late KD Sultanpuri, against incumbent BJP MP Suresh Kashyap, who is facing heavy anti-incumbency and wrath of the apple farmers.

CHANDIGARH

After consecutive wins in the past two Lok Sabha polls, the BJP is trying to retain its hold over the Union territory this election. The saffron party has fielded former Chandigarh Mayor Sanjay Tandon to offset the anti-incumbency against actor Kirron Kher, the BJP’s 2014 and 2019 winner from the seat.

However, public resentment over the BJP’s attempts at “stealing” the Chandigarh mayor’s post from the AAP and Congress alliance through manipulation has cast a long shadow on Tandon’s victory prospects. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had overturned the election of BJP’s Manoj Kumar as Chandigarh Mayor and appointed AAP’s Kuldeep Kumar to the post. The court had severely reprimanded Anil Masih, the returning officer for the election, for misdemeanour. Masih had been caught on camera violating the ballot papers of AAP and Congress councillors to ensure BJP’s win.

The AAP and Congress have been alleging that Masih is a close aide of Sanjay Tandon. Former Union minister and Congress leader Manish Tewari, who has been fielded as the joint candidate of the Congress and AAP against Tandon has been asserting that a vote for the BJP candidate would be a vote for Masih.

BIHAR

Constituencies going to polls: 8 of 40 (Patna Sahib, Pataliputra, Arrah, Buxar, Sasaram, Karakat, Jahanabad, Nalanda)

Among the crucial candidates in the seventh phase of the polls in Bihar are Union minister RK Singh who is contesting from Arrah while former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has been fielded from Patna Sahib constituency for the second consecutive time.

Singh, a former bureaucrat, is seeking a third-straight term from the constituency which he wrested from the Janata Dal in 2014. He is pitted against INDIA bloc candidate and CPI(M-L) Liberation member Sudama Prasad.

By putting Prasad, a Bania, up against Singh, an upper caste Rajput, INDIA bloc plans to cut the traditional Bania voter base of the NDA. This will supplement INDIA bloc’s core voter base of Muslims and Yadavs, both constituting 2 lakh and 4 lakh of the constituency’s 21 lakh-strong electorate.

In Patna Sahib, Ravi Shankar Prasad is contesting against Anshul Avijit, the son of former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, a veteran in Bihar politics. Avijit comes from a political family as he is the grandson of Babu Jagjivan Ram, freedom fighter and veteran Congress leader from Bihar.

The electoral contest in Bihar’s Patliputra constituency is also interesting as Misa Bharti, daughter of Lalu Prasad Yadav, is yet again contesting against former Union minister Ram Kripal Yadav, who was earlier in Rahstriya Janata Dal (RJD) with Lalu but shifted sides before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Misa has unsuccessfully contested from the seat twice against the NDA and is seeking to break the jinx this time around.

A multi-cornered battle awaits the Lok Sabha constituency in Karakat. Rashtriya Lok Morcha chief and former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, who is the NDA candidate from the seat, will slug it out with Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh, who is contesting as an Independent candidate.

The contest took an interesting turn, when Pawan, who was earlier fielded by the BJP as the candidate from West Bengal’s Asansol constituency, withdrew his candidature, citing personal reasons. The ‘power star’ later announced his candidature as an Independent from Bihar’s Karakat seat, forcing the BJP to expel him from the party.

INDIA bloc has fielded former CPI(ML) Liberation MLA, Raja Ram Kushwaha, from the constituency. The Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM has also thrown its hat in the ring by fielding Priyanka Chaudhary, a local zilla parishad member, from the constituency.

JHARKHAND

Constituencies going to polls: 3 of 11 (Rajmahal, Dumka, Godda)

Pitched battles are expected in the Dumka and Rajmahal seats where Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) candidates will face off with party rebels.

Daughter-in-law of JMM founder Shibu Soren, Sita Soren, who quit the party and joined the BJP recently, is contesting from Dumka, her father-in-law’s turf against JMM’s Nalin Soren.

In the Rajmahal constituency, the attention will be on JMM MLA Lobin Hembrom, who in an embarrassment for his party, announced himself as an Independent candidate against party candidate and sitting MP, Vijay Hansda. The BJP has fielded Tala Marandi from the seat, making it a three-pronged contest.

Hembrom, who has been openly critical of Hemant Soren, has refused to obey the leadership of his wife Kalpana Soren, in the wake of the leadership crisis brought out by the former chief minister’s recent arrest and incarceration in a money laundering case.

Refusing to be called a rebel, Hembrom has claimed that he took the decision to contest as an Independent candidate after consulting with senior JMM leaders including Chief Minister Champai Soren, senior leader Nalin Soren and Stephen Marandi.

ODISHA

Constituencies going to polls: 6 of 21 (Mayurbhanj, Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur)

Polls will also be held in the 42 Assembly segments under these constituencies.

A high-octane battle is anticipated in the Kendrapara Lok Sabha constituency where BJP national vice-president and two-time MP Baijayant Panda is gearing to fight BJD candidate Anshuman Mohanty.

Cine star MP Anubhav Mohanty, who defeated Panda, a two-time MP in 2019 by over 1.5 lakh votes, on a BJD ticket, quit the party in March this year, stating that he was feeling “suffocated”. He later joined the BJP.

At a recent poll rally, BJD supremo and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik accused Panda, a friend turned foe, of betraying the people of the constituency and instead working for the growth of his business.

Fondly known as ‘Jay’ Panda, the politician who owns multiple businesses in Odisha, was suspended from the BJD in 2018 for “anti-party activities,” following which he resigned and joined the BJP in 2019. Panda will be facing Anshuman, a former Congress MLA from Rajnagar (under Kendrapada Lok Sabha seat), who quit the Grand Old Party earlier this year to join the BJD. He is the son of Nalinikanta Mohanty, who won from the Rajnagar seat six times as a nominee of the Janata Party, Janata Dal and the Congress. Sidharth Swarup Das is the Congress candidate for the seat.

The Balasore Lok Sabha constituency is set to witness a triangular fight with former Union minister and BJP candidate Pratap Chandra Sarangi, Congress’ Srikant Jena and BJD’s Lekhashree Samantsinghar being in the fray.

It is said the contest in the Balasore seat will be mostly between ‘Nana’ and ‘Jena’ with BJP turncoat Samantsinghar – who also made a late entry into the poll race – considered an outsider in the region.

While Sarangi, fondly known as ‘Nana’ (brother) in the constituency, was the Minister of State for Animal Husbandry, in Modi 1.0, Jena, a former zoology professor, was the Parliamentary Affairs minister in the IK Gujarat ministry in 1996 and the Chemical and Fertiliser minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet in 2009.

Sarangi, who became a social media sensation for his austere lifestyle soon after he was sworn in in Modi’s cabinet, had helmed the Bajrang Dal during its most controversial times. Known as a vociferous critic of proselytisation, Sarangi was the chief of the right-wing outfit when a Hindu mob immolated Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two children in Mayurbhanj district in 1999.

However, neither Sarangi’s nor the role of Bajrang Dal has been proved in any court of law so far.

Special attention will also be on the tribal Lok Sabha constituency of Mayurbhanj, which covers President Droupadi Murmu’s village Uparbeda.

The BJP, which wrested the seat from the BJD in 2019, this time dropped Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs and Jal Shakti, Bishweswar Tudu, and fielded Naba Charan Majhi, the MLA of Rairangpur in his stead. Majhi will contest against BJD minister and Bangiriposi MLA, Sudam Marndi. The INDIA bloc on the other hand has fielded JMM candidate and party founder Shibu Soren’s daughter Anjani from the seat. Anjani is also fighting the assembly elections from Saraskana seat.

The BJP won five of the seven Assembly segments in the parliamentary seat and is banking on the ‘Murmu factor’ to retain its hold on the Lok Sabha seat and sweep the assembly segments.

The BJD, which got down to work immediately after its defeat in the 2019 polls, is said to have regained lost ground in the constituency which was evident when it formed the Zilla Parishad in the 2022 panchayat polls.

BJD chief Patnaik, who addresses President Murmu as his “bhauni” (sister) has been trying to thwart any attempts by the BJP to appropriate her by reminding people how his government supported her candidature during the presidential polls.

With unemployment, issues concerning farmers including lack of irrigation facilities and absence of colleges being major issues in the constituency, the BJP has accused the BJD government of not doing enough for the development of tribals. Delay in developing the wartime Amarda Road Airstrip in Rasgovindpur despite a sanction of ₹45 crore under the Centre’s UDAN scheme, revival of Mayurbhanj’s Ayurvedic and Homeopathic colleges, lack of industrial development in the mineral-rich district , job crisis, and poor performance and high dropout rate among students are the major issues raised by the saffron party in the region.

WEST BENGAL

Constituencies going to polls: 9 of 42 (Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jaynagar, Mathurapur, Diamond Harbour, Jadavpur, Kolkata Dakshin, Kolkata Uttar)

The last and final phase of elections to the nine parliamentary constituencies in Kolkata and its adjoining areas are very vital for the Trinamool Congress (TMC). The outcome in these seats may finally decide whether the TMC could end up being the leading political party of the state.

A clean sweep in these seats helped it increase its tally to 22 in the 2019 General Elections despite the BJP's phenomenal rise in northern and western Bengal. The BJP ended up winning 18 of the 42 seats.

The challenge for TMC is to repeat the performance in the face of a two-pronged attack from the BJP and the Left Front-Congress combine.

Unlike the last elections, the contest this time in most of these seats are no longer bipolar between the TMC and the BJP.

In at least five of the nine seats, the TMC is facing a stiff challenge in three-cornered contests. These seats are Kolkata North, Kolkata South, Dum Dum, Jadavpur and Basirhat. Sandeshkhali is part of the Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency.

In Jadavpur, TMC candidate and actor turned politician Saayoni Ghosh has been pitted against BJP’s Anirban Ganguly and CPI(M)’s Srijan Bhattacharya.

The seventh phase will also see TMC war horse Saugata Roy defending the Dum Dum Lok Sabha seat in what is being touted as his last election. While the BJP has fielded TMC turncoat Silbhadra Dutta from the constituency, Sujan Chakraborty is the CPI(M) nominee.

An intense battle is likely in the Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency, a TMC turf covering Sandeshkhali, where the party has fielded Haji Nurul Islam against BJP’s Rekha Patra and CPI(M)’s Nirapada Sarkar. The TMC had dropped sitting MP Nusrat Jahan from the poll race after the Sandeshkhali controversy broke out. Jahan was criticised for making reels on social media but not having time to meet the women of Sandeshkhali who had accused TMC strongman Shahjahan Sheikh and his aides of sexually exploiting them.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee is eyeing a hat-trick from the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency. He will be facing off against BJP’s Abhijit Das Bobi and CPI(M)’s Pratik Ur Rahaman.

The alleged land grab and sexual harassment of women by TMC local leaders in Sandeshkhali, teacher recruitment scam, the central government’s alleged step-motherly treatment of Bengal and unemployment are the main issues dominated the electioneering in these constituencies.

Other TMC bigwigs contesting the polls in the seventh phase are Sudip Bandyopadhyay from North Kolkata, Mala Roy from South Kolkata and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar from Barasat.