Phase I campaigning comes to an end, and prominent figures go all out on the hustings

With polls scheduled to take place on April 19 on 102 seats spread across 21 states and Union territories, the first round of the Lok Sabha elections came to an end on Wednesday. Seven states, including Tamil Nadu (39 seats), will see the conclusion of voting in the first round.

The remaining states where voting will conclude are Arunachal Pradesh (2), Meghalaya (2), Mizoram (1), Sikkim (1), Nagaland (1), and Uttarakhand (5).

Before the required 48-hour silence period began in the evening on Wednesday, political campaigns, rallies, and roadshows reached a peak. Leaders of the opposition India alliance and the BJP-led NDA made a desperate attempt to win over voters. With accusations of corruption, dynastic politics, and “insulting” the Constitution and Hinduism, the BJP unleashed a full force against the Indian bloc. In response, the leaders of the opposition criticized the administration on a number of topics, including unemployment, inflation, and alleged agency abuse. They also criticized electoral bonds.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke at rallies in Agartala, Tripura, and Nalbari, Assam. He criticised Rahul Gandhi, the Congress MP, for condemning the CPI(M) in Kerala while also forming a “opportunistic” coalition with the Left party in Tripura.

Rahul referred to the electoral bonds program as the “biggest extortion scheme” at a news conference held in Ghaziabad earlier in the day with Akhilesh Yadav, the leader of the Samajwadi Party. He remarked, “The entire nation knows that the PM is the champion of corruption, so it won’t matter how much clarification the PM gives.”

Those in the running include two former chief ministers, Biplab Kumar Deb of Tripura and Nabam Tuki of Arunachal Pradesh, eight union ministers, Kiren Rijiju, Sarbanada Sonowal, Sanjeev Baliyan, Jitendra Singh, Bhupendra Yadav, Arjun Ram Meghwal, and L Murugan, as well as a former governor, Tamilisai Soundararajan of Telangana.

Eight seats in western Uttar Pradesh, five in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha area, six in Madhya Pradesh, the lone seat in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar, and twelve in Rajasthan will all hold elections in the first phase of the process.

Gadkari is trying to defeat Nagpur for the third time. Rijiju is running from Arunachal West, a seat he has held three times since 2004. From Dibrugarh in Assam, Sonowal is seeking a comeback to the Lok Sabha.

A fierce election contest is taking place in Muzaffarnagar, where Baliyan and Harindra Malik of the Samajwadi Party are facing off. In Udhampur, Jitendra Singh hopes to complete a hat-trick. Yadav is running against Congress MLA Lalit Yadav from Alwar. Govind Ram Meghwal, a former Congress minister, will face Meghwal in the Rajasthani seat of Bikaner.

Karti Chidambaram, the MP for Sivaganga, is running for reelection from a seat that his father won seven times. K Annamalai, the head of the Tamil Nadu BJP, will face DMK leader Ganapathy Rajkumar in the Coimbatore ballot test.

Seven stages will see voting for the 543 seats up for election in the 18th Lok Sabha. On June 4, the votes will be tallied.