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Voting is underway in 117 Lok Sabha constituencies in round six of the national election that ends on May 12. Of the 117 seats, the Congress holds 37 and the BJP 24 at present. Mulayam Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Priya Dutt, Milind Deora among those whose fate will be sealed today.
Here's a quick look at the top ten contests:
Dimple Yadav, the daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav and chief minister Akhilesh Yadav's wife, is seeking to defend her Kannauj seat that she won in 2012.
2) In Mathura, Jayant Chaudhary, son of Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh, is locked in a stiff contest with Bharatiya Janata Party candidate and Bollywood star Hema Malini, whose campaign has been lacklustre, but Narendra Modi was there at a recent rally.
Milind Deora
3) Union minister of state for IT and Communications Milind Deora, seeking a hat-trick win from South Mumbai seat, is locked in a quadrangular fight with Bala Nandgaonkar (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena), Arvind Sawant (Shiv Sena) and Meera Sanyal (Aam Aadmi Party). Sanyal, who polled approximately 10,000 votes in 2009, may draw some Muslim and minority votes due to AAP's relentless posturing against Modi.
4) Social activist turned politician, Medha Patkar recently joined AAP and is the Lok Sabha candidate from North East Mumbai constituency of Maharashtra. She is facing stiff competition from Sanjay Dina Patil of Nationalist Congress Party and BJP's Kirit Somaiya.
Priya Dutt, Congress MP
5) Priya Dutt, the daughter of late Congress leader Sunil Dutt and Poonam Mahajan, the daughter of former Union minister and BJP heavyweight Pramod Mahajan are locked in a tough fight for North-Central Mumbai seat. Samajwadi party's Farhan Azmi is also in the fray. While Priya is a two-time MP from the constituency, Poonam had got a drubbing in the 2009 Maharashtra Assembly elections when she fought on a BJP ticket from Ghatkopar West.
6) The Congress faces an acid test in West Bengal as it fought the 2009 Lok Sabha poll as an alliance partner of the Trinamool Congress. President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit and Mamata Banerjee’s bete noire Deepa Dasmunshi (Raiganj) are among the candidates. Abhijit had won the Jangipur seat by a slender margin of 2,536 votes in a 2012 by-election when his father Pranab Mukherjee vacated the seat to become the President of India.
Incumbent Congress MP Das Munshi is contesting against her husband's brother Satya Ranjan Das Munshi, who is the Trinamool Congress candidate. She fought a pitched battle with the Mamata government over setting up a proposed AIIMS-like hospital in the area.
7) The BJP’s high-profile Muslim face, Bhagalpur candidate Syed Shahnawaz Hussain is banking on the saffron party's tie-up with Lok Janshakti Party to gain crucial Dalit support against his rivals, Rashtriya Janata Dal's Shailesh Kumar, Janata Dal (United's) Abu Qaiser and Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Naushaba Khanam.
8) In Dumka (Jharkhand), the fight between two former chief ministers — sitting MP and JMM boss Shibu Soren and one-time protégé and now arch-rival Babulal Marandi (Jharkhand Vikas Morcha) — has all the makings of a regional epic. The BJP has fielded Sunil Soren, a one-time protege of Soren, to try and prevent an eighth Lok Sabha poll win for the JMM chief.
Sushma Swaraj
9) Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj is fighting against Congress's Laxman Singh, the younger brother of Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh. The BJP leader had won the 2009 Lok Sabha election from Vidisha with a huge margin of over four lakh votes. That time Congress candidate Rajkumar Patel’s nomination was rejected on technical grounds.
Rahul Gandhi's close confidante and sitting MP Meenakshi Natarajan is defending her seat Mandsaur in Western Madhya Pradesh.
10) In Chennai Central, DMK’s Dayanidhi Maran, who has been implicated in the Aircel-Maxis scam, is pitted against AIADMK’s SR Vijayakumar. In 2009, he won the seat comfortably.
A four-time MP and DMK's Dalit face, A Raja is seeking re-election from the Nilgiris constituency. The former telecom minister is facing AIADMK’s C Gopalakrishnan.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram is not contesting this time, and the Congress has fielded his son Karti Chidambaram from Sivaganga seat.
Former Union health minister and PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss is for the first time contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Dharmapuri, having been elected to the Rajya Sabha earlier.
