Voting took place in the Vaishali constituency in Bihar on May 25. As many as 766 million voters in the state were eligible to vote in this year’s Lok Sabha elections, which will be held alongside legislative elections in four states – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim.
This year’s Indian Lok Sabha election was the world’s largest, with a total of 968 million voters eligible to cast their ballots.
Background to the Lok Sabha elections:
India’s upcoming Lok Sabha elections, always a tense contest, pits the BJP-led NDA against a near-unified opposition called the Indian Union, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a third term in power.
The election campaign has been chaotic, with opposition parties complaining about a central government crackdown on party leaders, many of whom have faced legal action and jail time, which the BJP says is the result of corruption by party leaders.
Meanwhile, the BJP is facing criticism from the opposition for being a disproportionate beneficiary of the controversial electoral bond scheme, with more than 50% of the revenue – over Rs 6,000 crore – flowing to the saffron party.
Ahead of the elections, the two have traded accusations of hate speech, with Hassan’s sex scandal and Amit Shah’s fake video also becoming major issues. Meanwhile, PM Modi has continued to claim that the BJP-led NDA will win over 400 seats, while Rahul Gandhi’s saffron camp has projected 180 seats.
Regarding the poll issues, the idea of a developed India, questions over employment and demand for a socio-economic caste survey dominated the poll rallies.
What happened in the 2019 election?
Vaishali constituency had 17,35,983 voters in 2019, but the voter turnout was only 61.91 per cent.
In the 2019 elections, LJP candidate Veena Devi (unopposed by Dinesh Prasad Singh) won in Vaishali constituency by a margin of 2,34,584 votes.
The LJP was part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
