1. The first phase of voting will take place in Tamil Nadu (39), Rajasthan (12), Uttar Pradesh (8), Madhya Pradesh (6), Uttarakhand (5), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Meghalaya (2), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (1), Mizoram (1), Nagaland (1), Puducherry (1), Sikkim (1) and Lakshadweep (1). Besides, Assam and Maharashtra have 5 seats each, Bihar has 4 seats, West Bengal has 3 seats, Manipur has 2 seats, Tripura has , Jammu and Kashmir and Chhattisgarh have 1 seat each.

2. Four states – Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh – will also elect new assemblies along with the Lok Sabha. Of these, Arunachal Pradesh (60 seats) and Sikkim (32 seats) were the first to fall today.

3. Backed by a frenzied, core campaign led by Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the BJP aims to win 370 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, up from 2019’s score Increased substantially. The Prime Minister has set a target of 400 seats for the NDA. In the last election, the NDA won 353 seats, an increase of 5% from 2014. The BJP won 303 seats.

4. India’s opposition bloc has made headlines mainly for its pre-poll chaos, especially the defection of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and the drunken arrest of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal , India’s opposition groups have always stood together on the policy case. Even so, in multiple areas, the parties are pitted against each other, ignoring the rules of one-on-one competition and promising to drive the BJP out.

5. The biggest offender is Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which has fielded candidates against the Congress not only in Bengal but also in several northeastern states. The other is the Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal, which has done the same thing in Punjab and elsewhere, albeit with the Congress in Delhi The party reached a seat-sharing agreement.

6. The BJP hopes to win 22 of the 25 seats in the northeast (the region it currently dominates), sweeping the Hindi heartland, Jammu in the north and Gujarat in the west. In Bengal, it hopes to thrive at the expense of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress and make further inroads in Odisha, despite the The alliance proposal of Biju Janata Dal led by Naveen Patnaik failed.

7. In the south – once a bulwark against all northern parties except the Congress – the BJP is expected to win resoundingly in Karnataka, which went to polls in a Congress government last year . In an outreach campaign spearheaded by Prime Minister Modi, it also hopes to make an impact on Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu. As insurance, it piggybacked on a number of smaller parties, including S Ramadoss’ PMK.

8. The Congress party, driven out of much of northern India, insists it is on the verge of a comeback. Senior leader KC Venugopal said the party’s performance would improve in most northern states, including the BJP’s strongholds of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. With victories in the Telangana and Karnataka assembly elections and Tamil Nadu’s alliance with the DMK, it has shown huge confidence in the results in the south.

9. Today, eight federal ministers, two former chief ministers, a former governor and several key leaders are in the fray, resulting in a tight race for more than 20 seats. They include Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Jitendra Singh, Kiren Rijiju, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Sanjiv Balian, former Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan, Congress deputy leader Gaurav Gogoi in Lok Sabha and former Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal.

10. In 2019, UPA (United Progressive Alliance) won 45 of these 102 seats and NDA won 41. As part of the delimitation, six of the seats have been redrawn. Counting of votes will take place on June 4.

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