NEW DELHI: A total of 41.5 per cent of the 10 crore people eligible to vote in the 59 seats have exercised their franchise till 1 pm. Despite stray incidents of violence, 55.6 per cent of the electorates in the eight constituencies in West Bengal have exercised their franchise. Over 47.22 per cent of the voters in Jharkhand have voted so far. Voting in Delhi — where all the seven Lok Sabha seats are voting today, was the lowest with only 33 per cent of the electorates exercising their franchise till 1 pm. A worker of the Trinamool Congress was injured after he was hit by a bullet fired by BJP candidate Bharati Ghosh’s bodyguard in West Bengal today. Keshpur, which falls under Ghatal Lok Sabha seat, is tense with Trinamool workers resorting to violence. Poll violence in West Bengal have headlined the previous five phases of the national polls too. Earlier today, Bharati Ghosh, the BJP candidate in Bengal’s Ghatal, was attacked, heckled and pushed to the ground at a polling station earlier today. Ms Ghosh was allegedly surrounded and heckled by women supporters of the ruling Trinamool Congress when she tried to enter the booth with her polling agent. President Ram Nath Kovind, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and son Rahul Gandhi, cricketer Virat Kohli are some of the high-profile voters who voted today in Delhi. In Madhya Pradesh, where polling is being held in eight seats, BJP Bhopal candidate Pragya Thakur and Congress’s Jyothiraditya Scindia were among the early voters. Polling is being held in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 10 in Haryana, eight seats each in West Bengal, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, seven in Delhi and four in Jharkhand today. Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, senior Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia are among the 979 candidates contesting in this phase. In Delhi, where all the seven seats are voting today, the heads of the state unit of the BJP, Congress and AAP are contesting each other in the same seat. Meanwhie, senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia is contesting from Guna seat, a seat he has held comfortably since 2002. Varun Gandhi, the sitting MP from Sultanpur, is contesting from his mother Menka Gandhi Contingency pilhibit this time. The seat has elected his mother to Parliament from the seat six times. Varun Gandhi is up against Samajwadi Party’s Hemraj Verma, who also has the BSP’s backing.
