Star power in Phase 2: Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, Hema Malini, Arun Govil
The second phase of voting for the Lok Sabha polls will be held on April 26 with several key candidates like Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, Arun Govil and Hema Malini entering the fray.
In Short
- Key candidates from BJP, Congress to contest in second phase of Lok Sabha polls
- Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, Hema Malini, Arun Govil are in fray on Friday
- Polling for 89 seats across 13 states and Union Territories tomorrow
All eyes are on key candidates from the BJP and the Congress who are in the fray for the second phase of the Lok Sabha polls which will be held on Friday, April 26. These candidates include Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor and the BJP's Hema Malini and Arun Govil.
Voting will be held for 89 seats across 13 states and Union Territories and many of the candidates are re-contesting the seats they won in 2019.
An exception among such candidates is Arun Govil, the veteran actor famed for essaying the role of Lord Ram in the popular TV show Ramayan. Govil is the BJP's candidate for the Meerut seat and will be making his electoral debut against Bahujan Samaj Party's Devvrat Kumar Tyagi and Samajwadi Party's Sunita Verma.
The actor was fielded after the BJP dropped three-time MP Rajendra Agarwal, who had held the Meerut seat since 2004.
Rahul Gandhi is re-contesting the Wayanad seat from Kerala and has been fielded against CPI's Annie Raja and BJP's K Surendran. In the 2019 election, Gandhi had contested from both Amethi and Wayanad. He retained his Lok Sabha membership despite losing the Amethi seat to BJP's Smriti Irani, having won the Wayanad seat.
The Congress leader had secured victory by a substantial margin of more than 7 lakh votes against his closest rival, CPI's PP Suneer.
Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor is also hoping to retain the Thiruvananthapuram seat for the fourth time. He is pitted against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar from the BJP and CPI's Pannyan Raveendran.
Meanwhile, Hema Malini, who has represented the Mathura constituency since 2014, is contesting against Congress' Mukesh Dhangar while Om Birla, a two-time MP from Kota, is facing Prahlad Gunjal from the Congress party.
In the second phase of Lok Sabha polls on Friday, polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, seven in Madhya Pradesh, five each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
OTHER KEY CANDIDATES IN THE FRAY
Congress general secretary KC Venugopal is also returning to the Lok Sabha poll fray after 2014 and will contest the Alappuzha seat in Kerala. The seat was the only one the Congress lost in Kerala in 2019.
Venugopal won the Alappuzha Assembly seat thrice in a row in 1996, 2001, and 2006 and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Alappuzha in 2009 and 2014. In 2019, he did not contest after Congress elevated him to the post of general secretary.
Prominent BJP leaders who are in the fray in the second phase include Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, party MPs Tejasvi Surya and Sukanta Majumdar, and former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel.
Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is eyeing a third win from the Jodhpur seat and is contesting against Congress candidate Karan Singh Uchiyarda.
Tejasvi Surya, the sitting MP for Bangalore South and the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), will face Congress' Sowmya Reddy.
Sukanta Majumdar, incumbent BJP MP from Balurghat in West Bengal is seeking re-election. He is pitted against Biplab Mitra of the Trinamool Congress and Joydeb Siddhanta of the Revolutionary Socialist Party.
Former chief minister of Chhattisgarh and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel is contesting from Rajnandgaon, a stronghold of the BJP for over 30 years. He was fielded against the BJP's Santosh Pandey, who won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.