Jaipur, 26 April (HS). Voting for the remaining 13 seats of Rajasthan in the second phase of Lok Sabha elections began at 7 am on Friday. A total of 152 candidates are in the fray for these seats. Many senior leaders cast their votes early in the morning. These include Shiksha Madan Dilawar, former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and BJP candidate and minister Kailash Chaudhary from Barmer-Jaisalmer. There are long queues of people outside the polling stations since morning.
The 13 seats in the second phase in Rajasthan include Jodhpur, Barmer, Pali, Jalore, Rajsamand, Ajmer, Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Udaipur, Banswara, Tonk-Sawai Madhopur, Kota and Jhalawar-Baran. The most interesting contest is on Barmer, Banswara and Kota seats. Voting is happening today
Education and Panchayat Raj Minister Madan Dilawar along with his family was the first to reach his polling station and cast his first vote. Dilawar along with his wife Suraj Dilawar, son Deepak Dilawar and his two daughters-in-law Preeti Dilawar and Hemlata Dilawar reached the polling booth at Mother Teresa Higher Secondary School, Veer Savarkar Nagar, Rangbadi Kota at 7 am and cast their vote first. After voting, Minister Dilawar appealed to the people to first reach the polling station and cast their vote. He said that elections are the great sacrifice of democracy and we all have to sacrifice ourselves in this great sacrifice by voting. Go yourself and take your family members too. Do vote. BJP MLA from Ajmer South Anita Bhadel reached Maliyan Saini School to vote.
Former Chief Minister and Jhalrapatan MLA Vasundhara Raje voted in Jhalawar city. Raje reached the polling booth with her grandson Vinayak Pratap Singh. His grandson voted for the first time in the Lok Sabha. During this time his son and BJP candidate Dushyant Singh was also present with him.
Chief Electoral Officer Praveen Gupta said that 2 crore 80 lakh 78 thousand 399 voters are registered in the 13 Lok Sabha constituencies going for voting in the second phase. There are 1 crore 44 lakh 74 thousand 618 male, 1 crore 36 lakh 03 thousand 457 female and 324 transgender voters. The number of service voters is 26 thousand 837. In these areas, there has been an increase of 23 lakh 02 thousand 211 voters as compared to the year 2019. As compared to the year 2019, the number of new voters aged 18-19 years has increased from 7.13 lakh to 8.66 lakh. With this, the number of disabled voters has increased from 2.53 lakh to 3.23 lakh, the number of NRI voters has increased from 70 to 130. A total of 152 candidates are in the fray. These include 145 men and 7 women. There were a total of 115 candidates in these constituencies during the 2019 Lok Sabha general elections. Of these, 108 were men and 7 were women.