Voting underway

Voting for the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections began on Friday morning. A total of 88 constituencies across 12 states and a union territory, including Congress stalwart Rahul Gandhi's Wayanad, are voting to choose their representatives to the lower house of the Indian parliament.

Voting in all 20 seats in Kerala started at 7 am today. Polling in 14 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, 8 seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, 6 seats in Madhya Pradesh, 5 seats each in Assam and Bihar, 3 seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and 1 seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir, will also take place on Friday.

A total of 89 seats were supposed to be polling in the second phase elections; however, voting in Madhya Pradesh's Betul was rescheduled due to the death of the BSP candidate.

In total, 15.88 crore voters are eligible to exercise their fundamental right in the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections. 8.08 crore male voters, 7.8 crore female voters and 5,929 third gender electors are eligible to vote at 1.67 lakh polling stations. These include 34.8 lakh first-time voters and 3.28 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years.

1202 candidates will try their luck in the second phase of the general elections, including 102 women and two people from the third gender category.

Political stalwarts like Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, actor-turned-politician Arun Govil, Karnataka deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar's brother DK Suresh (Cong), former Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy (JDS), BJP's Hema Malini, Om Birla and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are in the fray today.

Rahul Gandhi, the sitting MP from Wayanad, is contesting against CPI's Annie Raja and BJP's K Surendran. Tharoor, the Congress Thiruvananthapuram candidate, is contesting against BJP's Rajeev Chandrashekhar. Malini, who has represented the Mathura constituency since 2014, is contesting against Congress's Mukesh Dhangar while Om Birla, a two-time MP from Kota, is facing Prahlad Gunjal of the Congress. Shekhawat is eyeing a third win from the Jodhpur seat. Tejasvi Surya is contesting against Congress's Sowmya Reddy.

In the 2019 general elections, the ruling National Democratic Alliance had won 56 of these 89 seats.

The first of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections comprising 102 seats witnessed 65.5 percent voter turnout.

After Friday's voting, the Lok Sabha elections will be over in Kerala, Rajasthan and Tripura. In the first phase on April 19, polling was completed in all seats of Tamil Nadu (39), Uttarakhand (5), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Meghalaya (2), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (1), Mizoram (1), Nagaland (1), Puducherry (1), Sikkim (1) and Lakshadweep (1).

The elections for the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections will take place on May 7.