Lok Sabha Elections 2019: The voting in 91 parliamentary constituencies spread across 18 states and two UTs, including all in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, began at 7 AM and continue till 6 PM on Thursday, April 11. Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Kiren Rijiju and VK Singh among several others are in the fray for the Lok Sabha Election 2019 phase 1 polling. Stay with India.com for Live Updates on Lok Sabha polls phase 1 voting. (Click here for full coverage on Lok Sabha Polls)
The first phase will see the following states going to polls– Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Sikkim, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep.
In Andhra Pradesh, this is the first general election after the bifurcation of the state in 2014. Polling for all 25 Lok Sabha and 175 assembly seats will be held simultaneously. There are 2,118 candidates for the state polls and 319 for the Lok Sabha elections. TDP chief and CM N Chandrababu Naidu will be seeking election from Kuppam, while his son Nara Lokesh is making his electoral debut from Mangalagiri. YSR Congress chief Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, an aspirant for the CM’s post, is fighting from his family’s pocket borough Pulivendula.
All 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana will go to polls in phase-one. There are 443 candidates in the fray. Congress leader Renuka Chowdhary (Khammam), AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi (Hyderabad), state Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy (Nalgonda) and daughter of TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, are among the prominent candidates.
In Uttar Pradesh on eight seats, the ruling BJP will clash with the newly-formed SP-BSP-RLD alliance. Meanwhile, seven Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra will go to polls. In Bihar, four Lok Sabha seats will see polling on Thursday. LJP leader Chirag Paswan is contesting from Jamui reserved seat. He is the sitting MP and is locked in a virtual straight contest with Bhudeo Chaudhary of RLSP.
In the North East, of the two seats in Arunachal Pradesh Union Minister Kiren Rijiju is seeking re-election from Arunachal West. Four seats in Assam will go to polls, with former CM Tarun Gogoi’s son Gaurav Gogoi testing poll waters from Kaliabor.
In Chhattisgarh where one Lok Sabha seat, Bastar, is going to polls. On the other hand, sixty lakh voters will exercise their franchise in the first phase of polls for four Lok Sabha and 28 assembly seats in Odisha. Two seats each in West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir and Meghalaya will see polling in the first phase.
Lone Lok Sabha seats going to polls on April 11 include Mizoram, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar, and Lakshadweep.
Voting for 543 Lok Sabha seats will be held in seven phases: April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19. Counting will be done on May 23.
