Rahul’s Wayanad is among key seats on the ballot in the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections today

After fierce campaigning, the second round of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections will be held on Friday across 88 seats in 13 states.

The Betul polls have been pushed to phase 3 following the death of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate.

Among the 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala, 14 in Karnataka, 13 in Rajasthan, eight each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, seven in Madhya Pradesh, five in Assam and Bihar, three in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one in Manipur, Tripura, and Jammu and Kashmir, there will be elections.

1.67 lakh polling stations across the country will allow over 15.88 crore voters to exercise their voting rights on Friday. A total of 1,202 candidates are participating in the competition, including 1,098 males, 102 females, and two persons from the third gender. Among them are 34.8 lakh first-time voters and 3.28 crore voters in the age group of 20-29 years.

Some prominent candidates in the upcoming second phase of elections include Congress’s Bhupesh Baghel, DK Suresh, Shobha Karandlaje, Tejasvi Surya, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Hema Malini, Arun Govil, Rahul Gandhi. Vaibhav Gehlot, Shashi Tharoor and Rajeev Chandrasekhar

There will be intense competition in Kerala’s Wayanad between incumbent Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Communist Party of India’s Annie Raja, and BJP president K Surendran in this phase.

As the Bhartiya Janta Party seeks its third consecutive term at the Centre, it will campaign under the slogan “Abki baar 400 paar”. As part of their campaign to stage an upset, parties in the opposition INDIA bloc promise MSP for farmers, cash handouts for women, and more reservations for backward sections and minorities.