Millions of Indians will cast their votes on May 7 in the third phase of a seven-stage election that will include India’s powerful home minister, a perfume baron and scion of a former princely state.
Home Minister Amit Shah, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-hand man, is seeking re-election in the city of Gandhinagar in Gujarat state.
Meanwhile, Jyotiraditya Scindia, the civil aviation and steel minister and grandson of the last ruler of the princely state of Gwalior, is contesting from the city of Guna in Madhya Pradesh state, while Badruddin Ajmal, the owner of the Ajmal perfume brand, is on the ballot from Dhubri in the northeastern state of Assam .
Voters will decide the fate of 1,351 candidates running for 94 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. The constituencies are spread across 12 states and federal territories, with Gujarat, Modi’s home state, voting in 25 seats. Voters will not decide who will fill Gujarat’s Surat seat as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate was declared the winner after all his opponents resigned.
Below-average voter turnout, anti-Muslim hate speech and allegations of electoral commission bias marked the first two phases on April 19 and 26 of the world’s largest-ever democratic exercise. About 969 million registered voters will vote in 543 parliamentary constituencies in 36 states and federally administered territories – so-called Union Territories.
A coalition of 26 parties called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), led by the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, hopes to defeat the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Modi’s BJP. Opinion polls give Modi an edge as his personal popularity appears intact, although respondents see inflation and a lack of jobs as growing concerns.
Who will vote in the third phase?
Voters from the following states and territories will cast their ballots for these constituencies in the third phase:
Karnataka: 14 of the southern state’s 28 seats
Gujarat: 25 of the western state’s 26 seats
Uttar Pradesh: 10 of the northern state’s 80 seats
Madhya Pradesh: nine of the 29 central state seats
Assam: four of the northeastern state’s 14 seats
Goa: both seats of the coastal state
Chhattisgarh: seven of the eleven central state seats
Bihar: five of the eastern state’s 40 seats
Maharashtra: 11 of the western state’s 48 seats
West Bengal: four of the eastern state’s 42 seats
Jammu and Kashmir: one of the five seats of the Union Territory
Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu: both seats of the union territory
What are some of the key constituencies?
Gandhinagar (Gujarat): Since 1989, the BJP has been a dominant player in the Gandhinagar constituency, represented by party bigwigs like Lal Krishna Advani and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Advani, who was at the center of national politics in the late 1980s for leading a divisive nationwide campaign to build a Hindu temple on the site of a mosque in Ayodhya, had won the seat six times before giving way to Shah in 2019. Shah won by a margin of more than half a million votes. In January, Modi inaugurated the Ayodhya Temple.
Like his mentor Modi, Shah was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organization that has influenced the BJP’s ideology and policies. Shah rose to become BJP president, a post he gave up after becoming home minister in 2019.
The 59-year-old is known among both supporters and opponents for his Machiavellian style of politics. Critics accuse him of orchestrating horse-trading to destabilize opposition-led governments. In 2010, he was jailed for suspected extrajudicial killings and barred from visiting his home state while he was the state’s home minister under then-Prime Minister Modi. He was subsequently acquitted of the charges. Shah has consistently denied all allegations made against him and accused the opposition Congress party – then in power at the federal level – of targeting him in 2010 out of political vindictiveness.
Guna (Madhya Pradesh): Scindia is contesting from Guna. From 2002 to 2019, he represented Guna in Parliament as a member of the Congress Party. He lost the 2019 election when a Modi wave swept the country.
His father, Madhavrao Scindia (also a Congress supporter), and grandmother Vijaya Raje Scindia represented the Guna and Gwalior seats – considered the pocket district of the royal family of Gwalior.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, who was considered close to the Gandhi family dynasty that dominates the Congress party, shockingly joined the BJP in 2020. He also served as a minister under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (2004–2019).
Vidisha (Madhya Pradesh): Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is contesting from Vidisha after two decades. He had won the seat four times and served as a federal minister before being made chief minister of this Hindi heartland state. He led the BJP to victory in state elections in late 2023 but was asked by the party to hand over the baton to a younger leader.
Vajpayee (1991) and former external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj (2009 and 2014) have also represented Vidisha, which has been a BJP bastion since 1984.
Dhubri (Assam): Ajmal is seeking a fourth term as MP from Dhubri, which borders Bangladesh. Muslims make up more than two-thirds of the constituency’s population.
Ajmal founded his own party, the Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), in 2005 to fight for the rights of Muslims, who make up a third of the state’s population. Muslims have been labeled “foreigners” and “illegals” and face discrimination and harassment after xenophobic policies took root in the 1980s following the influx of refugees from Bangladesh in the 1970s.
According to a list by the Jordan-based Royal Islamic Studies Center, Ajmal is among the “500 most influential Muslims” in the world. The Ajmal perfume brand, founded by Ajmal’s father in Mumbai in the 1960s, has grown into a major perfume brand in the Middle East.
Dharwad, Shimoga, Haveri (Karnataka): These three constituencies in Karnataka, home to India’s $245 billion IT industry, have been a BJP stronghold for the past two decades. Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi is seeking a fourth term from Dharwad while former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai is in contention in Haveri.
Shimoga was a bastion of the Yediyurappa political family, represented by both former chief minister Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yediyurappa and his son Bookanakere Yeddyurappa Raghavendra. But the BJP’s decision to field Raghavendra again did not go down well with former chief minister KS Eshwarappa, who has decided to contest as an Independent.
Eshwarappa, once a senior BJP leader, was expelled from the party for his opposition.
Kannada film superstar Shiva Rajkumar’s wife Geetha Shivrajkumar’s appearance as a Congress candidate adds extra glamor to the political tussle in Shimoga.
When does voting begin and end?
Voting begins at 7 a.m. (01:30 GMT) and ends at 6 p.m. (12:30 GMT). Voters who are already in line when polls close will be able to vote, even if that means polls have to stay open longer.
The results are due to be published on June 4th.
Which parties govern the states that vote in the third phase?
- The BJP rules Assam, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
- The BJP governs Maharashtra and Bihar in alliances.
- The Congress rules Karnataka.
- The President appoints an Administrator for Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
- West Bengal is ruled by the All India Trinamool Congress Party, a member of the INDIA alliance.
- Jammu and Kashmir is governed directly from New Delhi. The state parliament remains suspended.
Who won these Lok Sabha seats in 2019?
- In the last Lok Sabha elections, the Congress, along with the parties now affiliated to the INDIA Alliance and those then affiliated to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, won 12 of the 94 seats on May 7 was decided.
- The BJP and NDA-affiliated parties won 80 of the seats in 2019. The BJP also won Surat, where Mukesh Dalal of the BJP ran unopposed this year and has already been declared the winner.
- In the 2019 elections, an independent candidate won a seat in Assam.
- Independent candidate Mohanbhai Sanjibhai Delkar was elected from the Union Territory constituency of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Delkar died on February 22, 2021. Kalaben Delker of the NDA-affiliated Shiv Sena was elected in a by-election in 2021.
How many people in India have voted so far?
The first and second phases of the Lok Sabha elections have already decided the fate of 190 MPs. In the first two phases, voting was completed for all seats in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Puducherry.
Voting for most of the seats in Assam and half of the seats in Karnataka has been completed in the second phase.
Voting for the Betul seat in Madhya Pradesh has been postponed from phase two to three following the death of Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Ashok Bhalavi.