NEW DELHI, 9 May 2004 — Amid predictions of a hung Parliament, campaigning drew to a close yesterday for the final phase of Lok Sabha elections covering 182 seats in 16 states and union territories on May 10.
Earlier leaders and their supporters fanned out for canvassing in a last-minute bid to court an estimated 215 million voters who will choose their representatives from 2,132 contestants, 149 of them women.
Elections will be held on Monday in the remaining 18 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, 17 of 29 in Madhya Pradesh and the last two seats in Jammu and Kashmir. Polling would also be held for all the seats in West Bengal (42), Tamil Nadu (39), Kerala (20), Punjab (13), Haryana (10), Delhi (seven), Uttaranchal (five), Himachal Pradesh (four) and one each in Lakshadweep, Pondicherry, Chandigarh, Assam (Silchar) and Sikkim. Elections will also be held for the 32-member Sikkim Assembly.
Leading tomorrow’s electoral race are CPI(M) veteran Somnath Chatterjee, seeking re-election from Bolpur, Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker P.M. Sayeed (Lakshadweep), Union Ministers Jagmohan, Sahib Singh Verma, Vijay Goel (All from Delhi), and Mamata Banerjee.
Also in the race are veterans like Congress’ A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury from Malda, Pranab Mukherjee from Jangipur in West Bengal and former Union Ministers P. Chidambaram, Mani Shankar Aiyer, T.R. Baalu, Ajit Singh of Rashtriya Lok Dal and Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna in Madhya Pradesh.
Opinion polls predict the BJP and its allies will struggle to win more than a third of the seats being contested on Monday. The latest by NDTV and the Indian Express newspaper predicted the BJP and its allies would pick up just 67 of the 182 seats at stake in the final round of voting.
That would leave them with between 240 and 260 seats overall in the 545-member lower house of Parliament, short of a majority, the poll said.
