Arrangements are complete for holding the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls on Monday in 49 constituencies spread over six states and two UTs. These include the high-profile Rae Bareli and Amethi seats from where former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Union Minister Smriti Irani are in the fray respectively.
In Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla, former chief minister Omar Abdullah, is a contestant.
Other prominent candidates in the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls include several Union ministers like Rajnath Singh (Lucknow, UP), Piyush Goyal (Mumbai North, Maharashtra), Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (from Fatehpur, UP) and Shantanu Thakur (Bangaon, WB); LJP (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan (Hajipur, Bihar), Shiv Sena's Shrikant Shinde (Kalyan, Maharashtra ), and BJP's Rajiv Pratap Rudy and RJD president Lalu Prasad's daughter Rohini Acharya (both Saran, Bihar).
Rahul Gandhi, who has contested from Wayanad in Kerala, is also in the fight for Rae Bareli, a Nehru-Gandhi family pocket borough that was represented by his mother Sonia Gandhi since 2004. The BJP has fielded UP minister Dinesh Pratap Singh.
In Amethi, Union minister Smriti Irani, who had defeated Rahul Gandhi in 2019, is seeking a second term, while KL Sharma, an aide of the Gandhi family, has been fielded by the Congress.
From Lucknow, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is eyeing a fourth term. He is up against sitting SP MLA (from Lucknow Central) Ravidas Mehrotra.
In the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, which covers the temple town of Ayodhya, the electoral contest is mainly between sitting BJP MP Lallu Singh, who is seeking a hat-trick, and Awadhesh Prasad, the SP MLA from Milkipur (SC) assembly constituency in Ayodhya.
Voting will take place in 13 seats in Maharashtra, 14 in Uttar Pradesh, seven in West Bengal, five each in Bihar and Odisha, three in Jharkhand and one each in J-K and Ladakh. This round covers the least number of 49 seats in the seven-phase election.
Soaring temperatures did not deter die-hard politicians across the country from wooing the voters as the Lok Sabha election season entered the last fortnight. Campaigning concluded on Saturday for the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls.
With over 40 of these seats with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders have tried to fend off the challenge posed by the INDIA bloc parties by raising the pitch on issues of appeasement, dynastic politics, Ram temple, Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), corruption and welfare initiatives taken by his government.
"If the SP and the Congress come to power, they will send Ram Lalla back to the tent and bulldoze the temple," Modi claimed. He also alleged that the opposition wanted to bring back Article 370.
This prompted the Congress and other INDIA bloc parties to accuse the BJP of polarising voters with its "Hindu-Muslim politics", and not focusing on issues like unemployment and inflation. They also persisted with their offensive on the issues of reservations and protecting the Constitution.
The parties also wrapped up canvassing in 35 assembly constituencies in Odisha, where BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is among the contenders.
Security has been stepped up in West Bengal's seven constituencies, with over 57 per cent of the polling stations identified as sensitive in the fifth phase -- the highest till now in this election.
With the conclusion of Phase IV, polling for general elections had crossed the halfway mark as it was completed in 23 states/UTs and 379 LS constituencies out of 543. The sixth and seventh phases are on May 25 and June 1 respectively. The counting of votes is on June 4.