Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Polling across 15 states today

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NEW DELHI: People in 15 states will vote on Tuesday in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections scheduled for today which will see a maximum of 117 seats going to the polls in a single phase of seven-phased election.


Voting will be completed in all seats of Gujarat, Kerala, Goa, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu with the third phase polls.


As many as 1,612 candidates are in fray, of which 316 belong to national parties and 76 are from state parties.


Significantly, a whopping 496 candidates are from registered unrecognised parties while 724 are independents.


The presidents of the two main political parties are in fray in the third phase with BJP chief Amit Shah making his Lok Sabha election debut from Gandhinagar and Congress President Rahul Gandhi contesting from Wayanad.


The BJP will aim to defend the 62 of the 11 third phase seats it won in 2014 and its performance in this phase will be crucial in deciding its political fortunes.


One fourth of the contestants, or 392 politicians, boast a net worth of over Rs 1 crore, with average assets per candidate standing at Rs 2.95 crore, India Today reported.


The National Election Watch and non-profit election research group Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) analysed affidavits of 1,594 candidates - affidavits of 18 candidates could not be analysed due to the unavailability of complete information — and found that around 10 per cent of the candidates declared assets above Rs 5 crore.


The presidents of the two main political parties are in fray .. in the third phase with BJP chief Amit Shah making his Lok Sabha election debut from Gandhinagar and Congress President Rahul Gandhi contesting from Wayanad.


Out of the 97 candidates fielded by the BJP, 81 are crorepatis. Similarly, 82 per cent of the 90 Congress candidates have declared assets worth more than Rs 1 crore. The respective figures for the Samajwadi Party, CPM and NCP stand at 90 per cent, 53 per cent and 70 per cent.


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