After nearly 80 days of campaigning, voting for the Lok Sabha elections will end on Saturday. Voting will be held on 57 seats in eight states and union territories on June 1. This is the second longest parliamentary election after the first Lok Sabha election of 1951-52. Once the voting ends, all eyes will be on the exit polls and the results on June 4. By the end of Saturday, polling will be completed simultaneously in all 13 seats in Punjab and all four seats in Himachal Pradesh. The other states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal – where voting took place in all seven phases and Odisha – are also holding assembly elections simultaneously. In 2019, the opposition India Bloc and the ruling BJP-led NDA won 19 and 30 seats respectively out of these 57 seats. Of these, 25 seats were won by the BJP alone. Among the members of the India Bloc, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Congress won the most seats at nine and eight respectively. Several non-alliance parties also won several constituencies: the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) won four seats in Odisha, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won two seats in UP, and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) won two seats in Punjab.
The parties that formed the NDA got 39.03% of the votes compared to the 37.52% vote share of the India Block parties. In 2014, the NDA won 39 of these seats and the India Alliance parties won 11 seats, while 10 went to other parties.
Party-wise candidates with criminal cases
BJP: 23 (45% of the party’s candidates)
BSP: 13 (23%)
Congress: 12 (39%)
You: 5 (39%)
SAD: 8 (62%)
TMC: 7 (78%)
SP: 7 (78%)
CPI(M): 5 (63%)
The richest candidate
Harsimrat Kaur Badal (SAD), contesting from Bathinda, Punjab | Assets: Rs 198.52 crore
Baijayant Panda (BJP), contesting from Kendrapara, Odisha Assets: Rs 148.09 crore
Sanjay Tandon (BJP), contesting from Chandigarh Assets: Rs 111.86 crore
the youngest and the oldest
Youngest: Two candidates aged 25, from smaller parties
Oldest: 87-year-old independent K Rangaiya, contesting from Godda in Jharkhand
Major Battlefields in Phase 7
Punjab and Chandigarh
Total Seats: 14
Total Voters: 2.2 Crore
First time voters: 5.04 lakh
