Final phase of poll begins

The Final phase of poll begins today  with 10.17 crore people across seven statesand a union territory voting to elect its next union government

All eyes are on Varanasi and Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh,Patna Sahib and Patiliputra in Bihar; Gurdaspur and Amritsar in Punjab; andnine in West Bengal that the BJP hopes to wrest to compensate for the possiblelosses in the Hindi heartland of UP, MP and Rajasthan.

The toughest and violent election is taking place in WestBengal  as the Trinamool Congress slappeda defamation notice against the Prime Minister while BJP leader Dr HimantaBiswa Sharma promising surprise result in Bengal for BJP.

Voters   are quesingsince early morning to beat the heat across 59 Lok Sabha constituencies inPunjab, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh,Jharkhand and Chandigarh will decide the fate of as many as 918 candidates inthe final phase of the elections.

The BJP has the most at stake in this phase, having won  almost half of the 59 seats in the 2014 polls.While the party will face off against a grand alliance of opposition parties inUttar Pradesh, its main rivals in Bihar, Punjab and West Bengal are theRashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress respectively.

In Punjab, the BJP is hoping that its gamble of fieldingSunny Deol, who acted in a number of patriotic films hoped to ride on the backof nationalist fervour generated by the Balakot air strikes. His main rival issitting Congress parliamentarian Sunil Jakhar.

In Bihar's Patna Sahib, actor-turned-politician ShatrughanSinha takes on Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in a role reversal of thebattle of the giants. Although Mr Sinha had contested on a BJP ticket to winthe previous election by over 4.85 lakh votes in 2014, he is being fielded asthe joint Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal candidate this time.

In West Bengal, amidst continuous violence over 1.49 crorevoters will decide the fate of 111 candidates in nine constituencies of Bengal— Kolkata North, Kolkata South, Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat, Jadavpur, DiamondHarbour, Jaynagar and Mathurapur — in the final phase of the elections. Mostof them will witness a four-cornered contest between the Trinamool Congress,the BJP, the Congress and the Left.

Chandigarh, the lone union territory going to the polls inthe seventh phase, will witness a high-stakes triangular battle between theBJP's Kirron Kher, Congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal and Harmohan Dhawan ofthe Aam Aadmi Party.