THE 2024 Lok Sabha polls will kick off Friday with polling for the first phase scheduled in 102 seats spread across 21 States and Union territories and among those in the fray are Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Sarbanada Sonowal and Bhupendra Yadav, Gaurav Gogoi of Congress, DMK’s Kanimozhi and K Annamalai of BJP. Simultaneously, Assembly elections in Arunachal Pradesh (60 seats) and Sikkim (32 seats) will also be held. Voting will begin at 7 am and end at 6 pm. The Election Commission has deployed over 18 lakh polling personnel across 1.87 lakh polling stations where over 16.63 crore voters will exercise their franchise. Voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women and 11,371 from third gender. There are as many as 35.67 lakh first time voters, besides 3.51 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years. There are a total of 1,625 candidates (Males - 1491; and Females-134) in the fray. While the BJP-led NDA under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a stronger majority, the constituents of the Opposition I.N.D.I.A. bloc are hoping for a rebound after facing reverses in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

 

Polling will be held in all seats of Tamil Nadu (39), Uttarakhand (5), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Meghalaya (2), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (1), Mizoram (1), Nagaland (1), Puducherry (1), Sikkim (1) and Lakshadweep (1). Besides, there will be voting in 12 seats in Rajasthan, 8 in Uttar Pradesh, 6 in Madhya Pradesh, 5 seats each in Assam and Maharashtra, 4 in Bihar, 3 in West Bengal, 2 seats in Manipur, and one seat each in Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir and Chhattisgarh. Campaigning for the first phase ended Wednesday evening. Besides Gadkari, Sonowal and Yadav, six other Union ministers - Kiren Rijiju, Sanjeev Baliyan, Jitendra Singh, Arjun Ram Meghwal, L Murugan and Nisith Pramanik are among the contestants besides two former Chief Ministers - Biplab Kumar Deb (Tripura) and Nabam Tuki (Arunachal Pradesh), and former Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan. In 2019, the UPA had won 45 of these 102 seats and the NDA 41. Six of these seats have been redrawn as part of the delimitation exercise. The poll body informed that there are 41 helicopters, 84 Special trains and nearly 1 lakh vehicles have been deployed to ferry polling and security personnel. Webcasting will be done in more than 50 % of the polling stations along with the deployment of micro observers in all polling stations. 361 Observers (127 General Observers, 67 Police Observers, 167 Expenditure Observers) have already reached their Constituencies days before the polls. They serve as the eyes and ears of the Commission to exercise utmost vigilance.

 

Additionally, Special Observers have been deployed in certain states. A total of 4627 Flying Squads, 5208 Statistics Surveillance Teams, 2028 Video Surveillance Teams and 1255 Video Viewing Teams are keeping surveillance round the clock to strictly and swiftly deal with any form of inducement of voters. A total of 1374 inter-State and 162 international Border check posts are keeping a strict vigil on any illicit flow of liquor, drugs, cash, and freebies. Strict surveillance has been kept at sea and air routes. Cross-verification of EVMs-VVPAT: SC reserves its verdict: THE Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta reserved its verdict after hearing the response of Election Commission on the pleas. The petitioners have also sought reversal of the poll panel’s 2017 decision to replace the transparent glass on VVPAT machines with an opaque glass through which a voter can see the slip only when the light is on for seven seconds. Senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the Election Commission, explained the process of how an EVM functions.