Lok Sabha election 2024 Phase 5: Max city, maha yudh

It’s the grand finale of the Maharashtra grudge match as the subplot in the NDA vs INDIA contest becomes the main theme. In and around India’s commercial capital, the two Senas square off in the most bitter & personal of fights in these Lok Sabha elections. The other big face-offs are in UP & Bengal
NDA to defend: 39 seats, including 13 out of 14 in UP, 11 out of 13 in Maharashtra (excluding 2 Sena candidates who are with Uddhav group), all 5 in Bihar, all 3 in Jharkhand, 3 out of 5 in Odisha, 3 out of 7 in West Bengal and lone seat in Ladakh.
Can look for gains in: Bengal, where it lost 4 of 7 seats polling today last time, and in Odisha.
INDIA to defend: 7 seats, including 4 of 7 seats polling today in West Bengal, 2 of 13 seats in Maharashtra (adding 2 Sena candidates with Uddhav group) and Rae Bareli in UP.
Can look for gains in: Almost all the states in this round, but more so in Maharashtra, where it had won only 3 of the 13 seats that go to polls today. Also in Bihar, where it starts with a clean slate.
What this break-up excludes: The lone seat polling today in Jammu & Kashmir, which is not possible to categorise as having been won by any party last time since seat boundaries have been redrawn since 2019.
High-stakes battles to watch today
Maharashtra: This Lok Sabha election’s most complex political arena sees its final act today with a high-voltage Sena vs Sena showdown, a fight that’s as much about political relevance as it is about Balasaheb’s legacy and prestige for the two protagonists — Uddhav Thackeray and the man who unseated him as CM, Eknath Shinde. Of the 13 remaining seats in the state polling today, six are in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, the Sena bastion where Uddhav is looking for voters’ stamp of condemnation of the “betrayal” he accuses Shinde of, leading to the party splitting in two. The Shinde group is part of Mahayuti (BJP) and Uddhav’s Sena UBT with MVA (Sharad Pawar’s NCP and Congress). Four of the seats are in the wider Mumbai Metropolitan Region, which includes Shinde’s home turf Thane. Here, Shinde is seeking endorsement of his rebellion. BJP, which did very well here in 2019, will see an advantage, but with two Senas and two NCPs in the mix, it’s a new playing field for all parties.
Uttar Pradesh: The state that votes in all seven phases moves into one of its biggest two rounds today — the next one in Phase 6 — as 14 seats in Awadh, including capital Lucknow, and the entire Bundelkhand (Jalaun, Jhansi, Hamirpur and Banda) go to polls today. In 2019, BJP swept these seats except Rae Bareli. This time, with the Gandhi bastion at the centre, INDIA bloc (Cong & Samajwadi Party) is eyeing a revival here. Other high-profile seats are Faizabad, which includes Ayodhya, and controversial former wrestling federation chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s stronghold Kaiserganj. Also keep an eye on Mohanlalganj and Fatehpur from where two Union ministers — Kaushal Kishore and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, respectively — are contesting.
A look at Union ministers & other heavyweights in the fray
Lucknow 2019 WINNER: BJP (Rajnath Singh)
Key contenders: Rajnath Singh (BJP), Ravidas Mehrotra (SP)
Defence minister Rajnath Singh inherited the legacy of Vajpayee in 2014 — after a brief interlude — and is looking for a hat-trick. Vajpayee won the seat on the trot between 1991 and 2004. His Man Friday in Lucknow, Lalji Tandon, won it in 2009, carrying the proverbial ‘khadau’ of Vajpayee. After making his LS debut from Ghaziabad in 2009, Rajnath shifted to the state capital to step into the giant shoes of his mentor. Even two decades after Vajpayee stepped out of active politics, Rajnath doesn’t miss any opportunity to invoke his legacy. He has brought in a slew of projects to the city for sprucing up infrastructure and creating jobs. SP’s Ravidas Mehrotra is an MLA and street fighter, a socialist who first became legislator in 1989. His challenge, however, seems feeble in front of Rajnath’s heavy election machinery.
Mumbai North
2019 winner: BJP (Gopal Shetty)
KEY CONTENDERS: Piyush Goyal (BJP), Bhushan Patil (Shiv Sena UBT)
A Rajya Sabha member so far, Union commerce and industries minister Piyush Goyal is making his LS debut from Mumbai, the city he grew up in. With its significant Gujarati and middle-class Maharashtrian population, this seat is a BJP stronghold and was nurtured by the party for years before actor Govinda delivered a shock defeat to Ram Naik in 2004. In 2019, Urmila Matondkar contested from here for Congress but was comprehensively beaten by Gopal Shetty. This time, Congress has given the seat to Uddhav’s Sena, which has fielded the relatively low-profile Bhushan Patil. Sena will be hoping to garner Marathi, Muslim and Christian votes, and is banking on the sympathy factor over the killing of its former corporator Abhishek Ghosalkar on FB Live earlier this year. However, this is one seat where the state’s political muddle does not cast a shadow like it does elsewhere because of BJP’s grassroots strength.
Baramulla
2019 : NC (Mohd Akbar Lone)
Key contenders: Omar Abdullah (NC), Sajjad Lone (People’s Conference)
Omar Abdullah, who has shifted to this north Kashmir seat from the south (Srinagar), says he is taking on “BJP and the Centre”, who are using all their resources here despite not fielding a candidate in the Valley. The former CM is batting for restoration of full statehood to J&K and has called the nullification of Article 370 an “existential challenge”. He says opponent Lone is the “B-team of BJP” while the latter calls Omar a dynast, an “outsider” and a “tourist” in Baramulla. Into this mix comes Sheikh Abdul Rasheed aka Engineer Rashid of Awami Ittehad Party, who is contesting the polls from Tihar jail, where he has been incarcerated since Aug 2019 on terror funding charges. A former aide of Lone, Rashid is a worry for him and PDP candidate Fayaz Mir as he polled over 1 lakh votes in the last LS election and is expected to cut into their share.
Hajipur
2019 winner: LJP (Pashupati Kumar Paras)
Key contender: Chirag Paswan (LJP-Ram Vilas), Shiv Chandra Ram (RJD)
Socialist bastion Hajipur is one of Bihar’s six Lok Sabha constituencies reserved for SCs. Ram Vilas Paswan represented this seat eight times in his career and lost just twice — in 1984 and 2009. In recent years, the poll narrative in Hajipur has centred around who is the claimant to Paswan’s legacy, son Chirag Paswan or brother Pashupati Kumar Paras, who won from here in 2019 after Paswan offered the seat to him. BJP has decided to fully back Chirag, allotting five seats in Bihar to Chirag’s faction and none to the Paras camp. Paswan’s party LJP split in 2021. For Chirag then, this is as deep a prestige battle as it gets. PM Modi has campaigned for him, but the battle is an uphill one, with RJD holding three of the six assembly segments and Congress one; ally BJP has the other two.
Rae Bareli
2019 winner: Cong (Sonia Gandhi)
Key contenders: Rahul Gandhi (Cong), Dinesh Pratap Singh (BJP), Thakur Prasad Yadav (BSP)
After a long wait, Rahul Gandhi chose his mother’s seat as his second contest, alongside Wayanad. He narrowly lost from neighbouring Amethi — another family bastion — against BJP’s Smriti Irani in 2019. Between the two, Rae Bareli is considered the ‘safer’ seat. Rae Bareli first elected Rahul’s grandfather Feroze Gandhi to Lok Sabha in 1952. His grandmother Indira Gandhi represented it between 1967 and 1985, barring the 1977 loss to Raj Narayan, while his mother Sonia was MP from 2004 to 2019. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and other INDIA bloc allies have campaigned for Rahul as Congress looks for an improved performance in UP, which is key to Parliament numbers. BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh, Congress MLC between 2009 and 2018 and Sonia’s pointsman, jumped ship after a dispute and instantly became BJP’s candidate in 2019. He brought down Sonia’s victory margin from 3 lakh to 1.7 lakh and is once again banking on BJP’s machinery, welfare schemes and his local clout.
Amethi
2019 winner: BJP (Smriti Irani)
Key contenders: Smriti Irani (BJP), KL Sharma (Cong)
It’s not quite the grudge match of 2019, but still seems to be going down to the last over. With Rahul Gandhi contesting from Rae Bareli, Congress sprung a surprise by fielding KL Sharma, who has been the Gandhis’ Man Friday in the twin constituencies for four decades, from Amethi. Sharma came to Amethi as a member of Rajiv Gandhi’s youth brigade in 1983. Rajiv, who won a bypoll following the demise of his brother Sanjay Gandhi, held the seat till his death in 1991. Sonia Gandhi made her Lok Sabha debut from here in 1999. She shifted to Rae Bareli in 2004, handing Amethi to Rahul, who won the seat thrice before the shock defeat to Smriti Irani in 2019. In the current campaign, Smriti has repeatedly called Rahul a “deserter” but the Congress narrative is that the family loyalist is more than capable of defeating her.