Nagpur :Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat exercised his franchise at a polling booth in Nagpur, Maharashtra, during the ongoing Lok Sabha elections on Friday.RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat showed his inked finger after casting his vote.
Urging people to exercise their franchise, he said, "Voting is our duty, our right. There should be 100 per cent polling. I have cast my vote."
Voting for the first phase of Lok Sabha elections 2024 began at 7:00 am on Friday across 102 parliamentary constituencies spread over 21 states and Union Territories. Voting will end at 6 pm.
Maharashtra, the second-largest state after Uttar Pradesh (80), which contributes 48 seats in 543-member Lok Sabha, will witness a fierce contest between the two major state coalitions - the Mahayuti (Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiv Sena, and Nationalist Congress Party) and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and NCP (SP).
Five Lok Sabha seats include Chandrapur, Bhandara-Gondiya, Gadchiroli-Chimur, Ramtek, and Nagpur.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Nitin Gadkari registered victory with a massive vote share of 55.7 per cent. He defeated the current Maharashtra Congress President, Nana Patole, with a victory margin of 2,16,009 votes. Gadkari also defeated Congress leader Vilas Muttemwar by a margin of 2,84,828 votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Chandrapur in Maharashtra was the only seat, out of the total 48 in the state, that Congress managed to win. But this time, the fight may not be easy for it as the BJP is sparing no effort to win back the constituency and fielded a state minister from there.
From the Congress's side, Pratibha Dhanorkar, the wife of Suresh alias Balu Dhanorkar who died last year, is in the fray, while the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has given a chance to Sudhir Mungantiwar, who is the Minister of Forests, Cultural Affairs in the state.
Ramtek is the only seat being contested by Shinde-led Sena in the first phase of general elections on April 19.
Congress, a constituent of Maha Vikas Aghadi, has fielded Shyamkumar Dault Barve from Ramtek.
In Gadchiroli-Chimur, the largest Lok Sabha constituency in terms of area in Maharashtra and with a huge region affected by Naxal violence, the Congress party has fielded Namdeo Dasaram Kirsan against Ashok Mahadeorao Nete of the BJP. Nete is the sitting Member of Parliament (MP), who won Lok Sabha polls from the same constituency two consecutive times in 2014 and 2019.
Marotrao Kovase of the Congress defeated Nete in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009. But Nete had won the state assembly elections from Gadchiroli seat twice, in 1999 and 2004.
Maharashtra has 48 Lok Sabha seats, the second-largest after Uttar Pradesh. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 23 out of 25 seats it contested in alliance with the undivided Shiv Sena. Elections to the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra will be held in five phases. The counting of votes will be held on June 4.