look news india
In the fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections 2024, voting has started from 7 am today on 49 seats in 6 states and 2 union territories. This will continue till 6 pm. Apart from 49 Lok Sabha seats in eight states and union territories, including Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, voting is also being held for 35 assembly seats in Odisha.
In this phase, 9 Union ministers including Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani and Piyush Goyal are in the fray. Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi is also contesting elections from Rae Bareli. According to the Election Commission, 695 candidates are in the fray in the fifth phase of elections. Of these, there are 613 male and 82 female candidates. Among these, women are only 12 percent.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted in 5 different languages on X. He urged people to vote in English, Oriya, Bengali, Marathi and Hindi.
On Sunday, a day before voting, the Election Commission said that people in cities like Mumbai, Thane and Lucknow have shown indifference towards voting in the past. The Commission has appealed to the voters of these cities to vote in large numbers this time. The Election Commission said, “In the past, urban apathy has been shown in the voting process in these cities. The Commission especially appeals to the voters of these cities to remove this stigma by participating in the voting process in large numbers.
The Commission issued a statement on May 3, referring to the second phase of voting, saying that it was very disappointed with the voting in some metros. The Election Commission had last month held a meeting with commissioners of several metros to chalk out a strategy to deal with urban voting apathy. Urban and youth apathy towards the voting process has been described as a phenomenon where young voters and people living in metropolitan cities do not turn up to their polling stations on polling day.