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Campaigning for first phase of India polls comes to end

The Congress, which has led India for a decade, has fallen out of favour with voters over a sharply slowing economy and massive corruption scandals.

Campaigning ended on Saturday evening for the first day of polling in India’s Lok Sabha elections in which voters in five constituencies in Assam and one in Tripura in the country’s North-East region will cast their votes on April 7.

Polling will be held from 7am to 5pm in these constituencies, official sources said. The Election Commission has deployed more than 34,000 personnel to man as many as 8,588 polling stations.

The commission has also banned the publication and dissemination of the results of exit polls between April 7 and May 12, the first and last day of the polls.

Opinion polls point to a strong win for the Bharatiya Janata Party under frontrunner for premier Narendra Modi, 63, a tea-stall owner’s son and a charismatic politician with a booming voice, who has said only he can revive the country’s once red-hot economy.

The secular left-leaning Congress, which has led India for a decade, has fallen out of favour with voters over a sharply slowing economy and massive corruption scandals.

In Assam, the five constituencies (out of a total of 14 in the state) going to the polls are Jorhat, Kaliabor, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh and Tezpur. In Tripura, polling will be held on Monday in Tripura West, one of the two parliamentary constituencies in the state.

Four of the seats in Assam are held by the Congress, and one by the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). Tripura West is held by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Polling will be held for three more seats in Assam on April 12 and for the remaining six on April 24. The second seat in Tripura will go to the polls on April 12.

The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have fielded five candidates each, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India are contesting for one seat each. Other parties have fielded 27 candidates and there are also 14 independents in the fray.

The remaining eight phases of polling in the Lok Sabha elections will be held on April 9, 10, 12, 17, 24 and 30 and on May 7 and 12.

Counting of votes will be taken up on May 16 and all the results are expected to be out by that evening.

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