News Brief
Kuldeep Negi
May 30, 2024, 01:20 PM | Updated 01:19 PM IST
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The campaigning for the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha elections will end today (29 May).
Voting for the last phase of the Lok Sabha elections will be held on 1 June in 57 parliamentary constituencies spread over seven states and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.
A total of 904 candidates are in the fray in this phase. Thirteen seats each in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, 9 in West Bengal, 8 seats in Bihar, 6 in Odisha, 4 in Himachal Pradesh, 3 in Jharkhand, and one in the Union Territory of Chandigarh are going to the polls on 1 June.
Simultaneously, 42 assembly seats in Odisha will also go to the polls. The counting of votes will be done on 4 June.
Leaders of various political parties are intensifying the last-minute rallies as the election season comes to a close in the country.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP's biggest star campaigner, addressed an election rally in Hoshiarpur in Punjab today.
After wrapping up the Lok Sabha elections campaign, PM Modi is expected to travel to Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, where he will stay until 1 June to meditate at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial.
All 13 seats of Punjab are voting in the last phase of polling on 1 June.
In a first since 1996, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is contesting the Lok Sabha polls in Punjab without its long-standing ally, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
BJP chief J P Nadda is set to hold rallies in Amritsar, Faridkot and Rupnagar of Punjab today.
Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah is also set to hold a rally in Robertsganj, UP.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will campaign today in Balasore, Odisha, and Anandpur Sahib, Punjab.
While Congress performance in Odisha is on a decline with party winning just one seat in the 2019 general elections, Punjab is a crucial state for the party as it had won 8 of the 13 seats in the last Parliamentary polls and had garnered a 40.12 per cent vote share.
Rahul's sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will campaign today in Solan, Himachal Pradesh, the sole Congress-ruled North Indian state.
Meanwhile, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann will hold road shows in Sangroor and Patiala.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav will hold election campaigning in Uttar Pradesh's Maharajganj, Mau and Gorakhpur.
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Kuldeep is Senior Editor (Newsroom) at Swarajya. He tweets at @kaydnegi.