Lok Sabha Election 2024: Voting begins on 88 Lok Sabha seats in the second phase, voters will decide the fate of 1202 candidates.

Voting has started from 7 am today in the second phase of the great festival of democracy. In the second phase, the public will decide the fate of a total of 1,202 candidates in EVMs today. In this, voters will cast their votes for 1,202 candidates on 88 Lok Sabha seats in 13 states. In this phase, the major candidates whose fate will be sealed in EVMs include former Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, actress Hema Malini, Arun Govil who played the role of Ram in the serial Ramayana, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor etc.

Voters will decide on the fate of these 3 ministers

In this phase, the fate of three Union Ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Rajiv Chandrashekhar, and Pralhad Joshi will also be decided. Voting will start at 7 am and continue till 6 pm. With the second phase of voting, voting will be completed on one-third of the seats in the country. Meanwhile, the Meteorological Department has expressed fear of heat waves in many states.

Voting was to be held on 89 seats in the second phase.

In 2019, out of these 88 seats, NDA won 55 and UPA won 24 seats. Six seats have been constituted afresh after delimitation. Voting will be held for all 20 seats in Kerala in this phase. Apart from this, voting will be held on 14 seats of Karnataka, 13 of Rajasthan, eight each of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six of Madhya Pradesh, five each of Assam and Bihar, and three seats each of Chhattisgarh and Bengal. Apart from this, voting will also be held on one seat each in Manipur, Tripura, and Jammu and Kashmir.

Although voting was to be held on 89 seats in the second phase, due to the death of the BSP candidate on the Betul seat in Madhya Pradesh, voting on this seat will now be held in the third phase. BJP's Hema Malini from Mathura, Om Birla from Kota, and Gajendra Singh from Jodhpur. Shekhawat is looking for a hat-trick of victories from his respective constituencies. Rahul Gandhi is the sitting MP from Wayanad and is contesting against CPI's Annie Raja and BJP's K Surendran.

Tharoor aims to win the Thiruvananthapuram seat for the fourth time. He is contesting against BJP's Chandrashekhar and CPI's Panniyan Ravindran. Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel is contesting from Rajnandgaon, which has been a BJP stronghold for more than 30 years. With the return of All India Congress Committee general secretary KC Venugopal to the Lok Sabha election fray after 2014, the battle for the Alappuzha seat in Kerala has become a question of prestige for the Congress.

Venugopal has not lost any major election in his career. He won the Alappuzha Assembly seat for three consecutive terms in 1996, 2001, and 2006 and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Alappuzha in 2009 and 2014. On the other hand, according to the Election Commission, all arrangements have been made for peaceful and fair voting. Webcasting will be done at more than 50 percent polling stations. Besides, micro observers have been deployed at all polling stations.

At least three helicopters, four special trains, and around 80,000 vehicles have been deployed to transport polling and security personnel. Let us tell you that about 65.5 percent of voting took place in the first of seven phases of elections held last Friday for 102 seats in 21 states and union territories.

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