Lok Sabha polls Phase 6 tomorrow: Cong failed to win any of the 58 seats going to polls, BJP won 40

With the finish line of the Lok Sabha polls in sight, the sixth and penultimate phase will see 58 seats across eight states and Union Territories (UTs) vote on Saturday. By the end of this phase, a total of 486 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats will have completed polling, with just 57 seats left for the seventh phase. On Saturday, all 10 seats in Haryana, the seven seats in Delhi and the final of the five seats in Jammu and Kashmir (voting in Anantnag-Rajouri was moved from the third to the sixth phase) will finish voting.

In 2019, the parties constituting the Opposition INDIA bloc and the ruling NDA won five and 45 of these 58 seats, respectively. The BJP alone won 40 of these constituencies. While the Congress did not win a single of these seats, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), National Conference (NC) and Samajwadi Party (SP), now in the INDIA bloc, were among the winners, apart from the unaligned Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Biju Janata Dal (BJD).

In terms of vote share, the parties that constitute NDA received 51.36% of the votes compared to the 28.66% vote share of the INDIA bloc parties.

In 2014, the NDA won 39 of these seats and the INDIA bloc parties 11, with eight going to other parties.

A total of 889 candidates are in the fray on Saturday. The BSP has fielded the most candidates at 54, followed by the BJP at 51, the Bengal-based Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) at 27, and the Congress at 25. With all 10 seats in Haryana and seven seats in Delhi voting on Saturday, they have the most candidates in this phase, at 223 and 162, respectively. Uttar Pradesh’s 14 seats in this phase have 162 candidates, followed by 91 in four Jharkhand seats.

Of the 183 candidates with pending criminal cases, Uttar Pradesh has the