1. The Electoral Commission, the polling body, will conduct a seven-phase exercise over the next 43 days, saying in a statement: “The Electoral Commission is working hard to ensure a smooth, transparent and inclusive electoral process in the subsequent phases of the 2024 general elections”.

2. Two states, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, also elected their assemblies today, with turnout of 68% and 68.3% respectively. In 2019, the voting rate in Sikkim was 81.4% and that in Arunachal Pradesh was 65.1%.

3. Tamil Nadu was one of the few states to hold single-day elections, with a turnout of 67.2%, down from 72.4% in 2019. Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu accounted for half of the 102 seats polled today, with a turnout of 57.3%, down from 64%.

4. As of 7 pm, the turnout in Uttar Pradesh was 59.5% and in Madhya Pradesh 66.7%. Bengal had the highest turnout at 77.6%, with the BJP hoping to close the gap with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. In 2019, the BJP won 18 of the state’s 42 seats.

5. Voter turnout was high in the northeastern states dominated by the BJP – Assam 72.3%, Meghalaya 74.5%, Manipur 69.2%, Arunachal Pradesh 67.7%, Tripur Latvia is as high as 80.6%.

6. In Bengal, Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party workers clashed in Cooch Behar, accusing each other of violence, intimidating voters and attacking poll workers, news agency PTI reported. Police denied any violence occurred. In Manipur, a burst of gunfire was heard at a polling station in Bishnupur. In Imphal East district, a polling station was vandalized. In Tamil Nadu, two elderly people, one of them a 77-year-old woman, died at a polling station in Salem district.

7. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been confident of a third consecutive term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, won only 50% of the seats in the last general election today. The NDA won 41 of these seats and the UPA won 45 seats. As part of the delimitation, six of the seats have been redrawn.

8. To achieve its target of 370 seats, the BJP is mainly relying on the South, Karnataka, especially Tamil Nadu (where the BJP is yet to open an account) and Bengal. In an exclusive interview with NDTV today, Union minister and BJP chief strategist Amit Shah said Prime Minister Modi’s popularity “will translate into our best performance in the south”.

9. 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 would perform better in most northern states, including the BJP bastions 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.

10. Counting of votes will take place on June 4.

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