New Delhi:

Polling for the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election began today with voting taking place in 49 seats across six states and the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. States where voting will take place are Uttar Pradesh (14), Maharashtra (13), Bengal (7), Odisha and Bihar (5), and Jharkhand (3), as also one seat each in J&K and Ladakh. In addition, 35 Assembly seats in Odisha will also vote.

This will be the smallest of the seven phases in this election but will still feature some big names, including Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who will contest from the family stronghold of Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh – won in the past five elections by his mother Sonia Gandhi. This will be his second contest this election; he fought from Kerala’s Wayanad, which voted April 26. He won the seat last year, allowing him to remain a MP after a shock defeat to the BJP’s Smriti Irani in UP’s other Congress bastion, Amethi.

READ | Called “Gandhis’ Chaprasi” By BJP Leader, Congress’s Amethi Pick Says

Amethi will also vote today, with senior Congress leader Kishori Lal Sharma looking to win back the seat. Mr Sharma, seen by many as a second-choice candidate after Rahul Gandhi’s sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, declined another invitation to make her electoral debut.

READ | Rahul Gandhi Files Papers From Raebareli, Gandhis Opt Out Of Amethi

Smriti Irani will attempt to defend her Amethi seat in this election.

The suspense over who from the Congress would contest these two (very) high-profile seats was among the biggest headlines leading up to this phase of the election, with even party boss Mallikarjun Kharge leaving the decision up to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is also on the ballot.

He contests from Lucknow and is aiming for a hat-trick, with the Samajwadi Party’s Ravidas Mehrotra his big rival. The SP is part of the INDIA bloc and has been backed in this campaign by the Congress.

Kaiserganj has also become a headline seat as it was the constituency of ex-national wrestling body chief Brij Bhushan Singh, who was dropped after the BJP came under heavy pressure over allegations of sexual assault against him. His son, instead, has been fielded.

READ | Like My Father, Will Be There For You: Brij Bhushan’s Son To Voters

Away from UP, the six Lok Sabha seats of Mumbai are also voting in this phase. 

Maharashtra politics has seen a series of swings and U-turns since the 2019 state election, which saw the Shiv Sena and the BJP part ways, and the latter form an unlikely alliance with the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.

However, since then both the Sena and the NCP have gone through civil wars and seen rebel factions join the BJP (and being rewarded with a chief minister and deputy chief minister’s post), leading to a controversial change of government and strengthening of the BJP’s hand for this election.

Mumbai’s six seats have been divided amongst the two big alliances at play in this election – the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and the Congress-led INDIA bloc.

The big names on the ballots in Indian’s financial capital include Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, who will contest from Mumbai (North) against the Congress’ Bhushan Patil. 

Mumbai’s North-West, South-Central, and South seats will see grudge matches, with the original Sena (led by ex-Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray) against those from the breakaway group (led by the current chief minister, Eknath Shinde). North-East seat will be a BJP vs Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) battle and it is the BJP vs the Congress for the North-Central seat.

In the 2019 election, the BJP and the (then) undivided Shiv Sena swept all six seats.

Other major seats in Maharashtra voting in this phase are Nashik and Palghar. 

Eknath Shinde’s Sena has fielded sitting MP Hemant Godse in Nashik, and he faces Rajabhau Waje from the Thackeray camp, while Palghar sees a more open contest.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (not an INDIA member), Mr Thackeray’s Sena, the BJP, and Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi – which had prolonged and ultimately fruitless and acrimonious talks with the Sena-Congress-NCP alliance – all fielding candidates. 

In Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter, Rohini Acharya, is looking to win back the Saran seat that was won by the ex-Chief Minister in 2009, in the first election after it was formed.

READ | Lalu Yadav’s Daughter Rohini Acharya Against Father’s Namesake In Saran

Since then, though, it has been held by the BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy. Another high-profile contest in the state is in Hajipur, which was the stronghold of late Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan.

Mr Paswan’s son, Chirag Paswan is leading one of the factions of the LJP that broke up after his death and has allied with the BJP. He faces Shiv Chandra Ram, a trusted aide of Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Ladakh, which saw a hunger fast by climate activist and environmental reformer Sonam Wangchuk in March over demands for statehood and protection of the fragile Himalayan ecology, sees a BJP vs Congress fight between Tashi Gyalsan and Tsering Namgyal.

J&K’s Baramulla seat is also voting. It will see ex-Chief Minister and National Conference boss Omar Abdullah looking to defend the seat won by Mohammad Akbar Lone in the last election.

READ | “J&K Faces Existential Threat”: Omar Abdullah On Article 370 Scrapping

He faces Sajjid Gani Lone of the Jammu and Kashmir’s People’s Conference and Fayaz Mir of the People’s Democratic Party, led by ex-Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.

The Congress and parties now with the INDIA bloc won nine of these 49 seats last time.

The BJP won 39 and will be hoping for a similarly emphatic result this time as it bids to achieve its target of 370 seats on its own and 400 with its NDA partners.

The sixth and seventh phases will take place on May 25 (when Delhi will vote) and June 1 (when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from Varanasi in UP).

Results will be out on June 4.

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New Delhi:

Rahul Gandhi, the Congress candidate from Raebareli, is campaigning to defend the family bastion – a stronghold of the since Independence.

Mr Gandhi reached the constituency with his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, to participate in one of the biggest rallies since he filed nominations for the seat. It was Mr Gandhi’s first rally in Raebareli.

While concluding his speech, Mr Gandhi asked his supporters whether they had any questions. A supporter in the crowd asked, “When are you getting married?” The Congress leader paused for a few seconds…smiled and said, “Jaldi karni padegi” (Now, I have to get married soon). Mr Gandhi waved at the crowd while his sister smiled and clapped and he walked off the stage.

As he ended his speech, he called his sister to the front of the dais.

Mr Gandhi expressed his appreciation for her efforts in the Raebareli campaign. “I am touring different parts of the country in the election and my sister is spending time here, a big thanks to her for this,” he said.

Priyanka Gandhi, who is not contesting in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, is rallying for her brother in Raebareli and party loyalist and close aide, Kishori Lal Sharma, in Amethi. The two seats combined were considered a stronghold of the party until BJP’s Smriti Irani defeated Rahul Gandhi in the previous general elections in 2019 and took the seat away from the Congress.

The suspense surrounding Amethi and Raebareli ended when Congress fielded Kishori Lal Sharma from the former and Mr Gandhi from the latter. The BJP has taunted the Congress for its choice and Ms Irani, the current MP from Amethi even called Mr Sharma a “proxy” and the Gandhis would have fought themselves and not fielded a proxy if they felt they could win.

We will leave no stone unturned in welcoming our guests. Congress’s decision to not field anyone from the Gandhi family in Amethi signifies that it has accepted defeat even before voting takes place,” said the actor-turned-politician.

Rahul Gandhi had won Amethi in 2004, 2009, and 2014, but a defeat to Ms Irani in 2019 reduced the Congress’s UP footprint. He had contested Wayanad in 2019 as a second seat and won it to retain his MP status.

Raebareli’s tryst with Congress can be traced back to the first general elections in 1952 when the seat was held by Feroze Gandhi, the husband of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and son-in-law of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who won the Raebareli seat in 1952 and then again in 1957. After he died in 1960, the Congress fielded RP Singh in the by-elections and retained the seat.

Sonia Gandhi picked Raebareli, a seat she won for four consecutive terms. In February 2024, when Mrs Gandhi announced her decision to not contest the next Lok Sabha elections, she wrote a letter to the Raebareli electorate, who supported her for two decades. “My family in Delhi is incomplete; it’s you all in Raebareli who complete it,” wrote the former Congress president. She added that her family’s ties with Raebareli run deep and she received it as a “saubhagya (good fortune)” from her in-laws.

Amethi, Uttar Pradesh:

Union minister Smriti Irani today said that the Gandhis’ absence from the electoral fray in Amethi indicates that the Congress has accepted defeat even before polling.

“Gandhi family not being present in the election fray in Amethi indicates that Congress party has accepted its defeat in Amethi even before the polling on the seat,” Ms Irani, the sitting MP from Amethi, told reporters.

She made the remarks responding to Congress loyalist KL Sharma filing his nomination from the seat.

“Had they felt there was any chance of victory on the seat, they would have contested from here and not fielded their proxy,” the BJP leader said, referring to the Gandhi family.

She asserted she will win the constituency again when it goes to polls on May 20.

Ms Irani took a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who filed his nomination from Raebareli today, saying, “the one who was not accepted by Amethi and fled to Wayanad will never fully belong to Rae Bareli.”

“Also the question is: he, in Wayanad, said it is his family. Now what will he say in Raebareli today?” she asked.

Rahul Gandhi has been a three-time MP from Amethi.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, his streak was broken by Irani, who defeated him by a margin of more than 55,000 votes and was hailed as a “giant killer.”

Responding to a question, Ms Irani said now that people in Amethi have seen development under the Narendra Modi government, they are forced to wonder why it did not happen in the last 50 years.

“They are asking why the Gandhi family did so much damage to the area,” she said.

“The PM had already predicted that after polling in Wayanad, Rahulji will look for a new seat and you are seeing it happen today,” Irani said.

Rahul Gandhi is a sitting MP from Wayanad in Kerala and has contested the seat again this election.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)