The third phase of the 18th Lok Sabha will be held on May 7. It will be held in 11 States with 95 seats. The elections for two seats have been rescheduled for the 3rd phase. Betul Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh, which was slated to be held in 2nd phase, was rescheduled to 3rd phase due to the demise of the Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. Besides, the election of the Anantnag-Rajouri seat in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir will be held on May 25, scheduled for the 6th, due to weather conditions. After the completion of the third phase, 284 seats would go to polls, which is 52.3 per cent of the membership of the Lok Sabha.
Gujarat State, all 26 Lok Sabha seats will go to polling in this phase. After Gujarat, the highest no. of seats in Karnataka will go to poll with 14 Lok Sabha seats. Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh will follow Karnataka with 11 and 10 seats respectively. Among the first three phases, this is the most important phase for the BJP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, among the 95 seats of the 3rd phase, the BJP won 72 seats. Besides winning 72 seats, the BJP was the runner in 8 seats. The BJP was in direct contest on 80 of the seats in 3rd phase. Among the 3rd phase seats, the Congress party won only four seats and was runner on 62 seats. The Congress party also has a lot of expectations from this phase. Until the 3rd phase, 164 of the BJP sitting seats have gone to the polls. This is more than half of the BJP strength in the 17th Lok Sabha.
In this phase, the BJP and the Congress party were in direct contest on 61 seats, and the BJP won 58 seats, while the Congress party won only three seats. The BJP will try to grab these three seats from the Congress party. These seats are Maldaha Dakshin, South Goa and Korba. The BJP lost Maldaha Dakshin and South Goa seats by a narrow margin of less than 10000 votes, while the BJP lost the Korba seat in Chhattisgarh by a margin of nearly 26000 votes. Most of the 58 seats which the BJP won against the Congress party were by a huge margin.
The third phase is also important for voting percentages. Dhubri LS seat in Assam will be voted in this phase. This seat witnessed the highest voting percentage in 2014 and 2019, with 88.36 and 90.66 per cent of voting. This seat is known for Muslim concentration, and Badruddin Ajmal of AIUDF has represented the seat since 2009. If the Anantnag-Rajouri Seat would go to vote in this round, then both the seats with the highest and lowest voting per cent in 2019 would go to poll in the same phase. However, the Anantnag-Rajouri seat will be voted on later, and the seat witnessed voting in single digits only in 2019.
Dhubri, Murshidabad, Maldaha Uttar, Maldaha Dakshin and Jangipur are the seats with the highest voting percentage in the third phase. These seats are known for high Muslim concentration. Bhind, Porbandar, Amreli, Surendranagar and Mainpuri are the seats having the lowest voting in 2019 in 3rd phase. As far as women voting is concerned, among the 3rd phase seats, Dhubri, Murshidabad, Maldaha Uttar, Maldaha Dakshin, and Jangipur have the highest women voting percentages. All these seats are Muslim-concentrated seats and demonstrate that Muslim women have a high consciousness for voting. In Murshidabad, Maldaha Uttar, Maldaha Dakshin, and Jangipur Lok Sabha seats, Muslim women surpassed their male counterparts in voting. Bhind, Porbandar, Amreli, Surendranagar, and Mainpuri are the seats with the lowest women voting percentages in 2019.
