Manoj Tiwari vs Kanhaiya Kumar, Mehbooba Mufti vs …: Key battles in phase 6 of Lok Sabha polls

The sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections is here. With just one more left on 1 June, India will soon have elected its new government. Fifty-seven constituencies across eight states and Union Territories will go to polls on Saturday (25 May).

All seven seats in Delhi, all 10 in Haryana, 14 in Uttar Pradesh, eight each in Bihar and West Bengal, six in Odisha, four in Jharkhand, and one in Jammu and Kashmir will be voting in the sixth phase. This penultimate phase will decide the fate of 889 candidates.

Voting has already concluded in 428 Lok Sabha seats across 25 states and Union territories.

As polling takes place for the sixth phase, here are the big battles to keep an eye on.

Delhi’s North East

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Manoj Tiwari is vying to be elected as a member of Parliament (MP) for a third term from the North East Delhi constituency.

He won the seat in the last two general elections. Tiwari trounced Congress veteran and three-time Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit by a margin of over 360,000 votes in the 2019 polls.

The saffron party swept all Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in 2014 and 2019.

Tiwari is facing Congress’ outspoken candidate Kanhaiya Kumar. It is one of the most interesting fights this election as both hail from Bihar and would be eyeing the Purvanchali votes in the constituency.

Kumar, the former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU), lost to BJP’s Giriraj Singh in Bihar’s Begusarai in the 2019 polls.

Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur

Maneka Gandhi is contesting on a BJP ticket to retain her bastion of Sultanpur. She bagged the seat in the 2019 polls by a margin of 14,526 votes against the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Chandra Bhadra Singh.

Gandhi is up against Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Ram Bhual Nishad and BSP’s Uday Raj Verma this time. She fended mostly for herself as among the BJP’s star campaigners, only Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath turned up to canvass for her.

Gandhi’s son, Varun, was not fielded by the BJP from the Pilibhit seat either.

Odisha’s Sambalpur

Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan of the BJP is in a close contest with the Biju Janata Dal’s (BJD) Pranab Prakash (Bobby) Das.

In the 2019 polls, BJP’s Nitesh Ganga Deb emerged victorious from the Sambalpur constituency with 473,770 votes. He defeated the BJD candidate Nalinikanta Pradhan by a margin of over 9,000 votes.

The three main parties of Odisha – BJD, BJP and Congress – have won the Sambalpur seat once in the last 15 years. The Congress’s Amar Pradhan bagged the seat in 2009, the BJD’s Nagendra Pradhan in 2014 and the BJP’s Deb in 2019.

BJP’s Odisha face Pradhan is returning to the electoral fray after 15 years. He had lost the Pallahara Assembly seat in Odisha to the BJD’s Rabi Narayan Pani in 2009.

Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag-Rajouri

Former Jammu and Kashmir CM and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti is in the fray from the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat.

PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti is contesting from the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat. PTI File Photo

She is being challenged by Mian Altaf Lavri of the National Conference party (NC) and Zafar Iqbal Khan Manhas of the J&K Apni Party (JKAP). The BJP has not fielded a candidate for the seat.

The delimitation added Rajouri and Poonch to the Anantnag constituency. Before this exercise, Anantnag was a stronghold of the PDP.

Haryana’s Karnal

The BJP veteran leader Manohar Lal Khattar is making his Lok Sabha debut from Karnal. In March, he stepped down as the Haryana CM and was replaced by Nayab Singh Saini.

Haryana Youth Congress president 30-year-old Divyanshu Budhiraja has thrown his hat in the ring against the 70-year-old leader.

Khattar was elected twice to the Haryana Assembly from Karnal in 2014 and 2019.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP’s Sanjay Bhatia won the seat by a huge margin of over six lakh votes against Congress’ Kuldip Sharma.

New Delhi

New Delhi constituency is one of the seats to watch out for in the sixth phase.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Somnath Bharti is in a head-to-head fight with the BJP’s Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late Sushma Swaraj.

This is Bansuri’s maiden electoral bid. The 40-year-old Supreme Court advocate replaced Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi from the seat.

In the 2019 polls, Congress’ Ajay Makan was defeated by Lekhi by over two lakh votes.

Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh

Azamgarh is gearing up for a high-stakes battle.

Popular Bhojpuri actor Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ is trying to retain the Azamgarh seat for the BJP. He is squaring off with the SP candidate Dharmendra Yadav, former UP CM Akhilesh Yadav’s cousin.

In the 2019 polls, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had defeated Nirahua by a margin of 259,874 votes. However, a bypoll was necessitated in 2022 when Akhilesh vacated the Lok Sabha seat to become Leader of Opposition in the UP Assembly.

Nirahua was triumphant this time around, routing SP’s Dharmendra by 8,000 votes. Now, the SP candidate is seeking to wrest the Azamgarh parliamentary seat from the BJP.

Other seats

In North West Delhi, Congress’ Udit Raj is pitted against the BJP’s Yogendra Chandolia.

Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda is in the fray from Haryana’s Rohtak against the BJP’s Arvind Kumar Sharma. Hooda lost his family’s erstwhile bastion to Sharma in the 2019 polls.

Trinamool Congress’ young face, Debangshu Bhattacharya, 28, is taking on the BJP’s Abhijit Gangopadhyay, a former judge of the Calcutta High Court, in West Bengal’s Tamluk. 

It is a tri-contest in Odisha’s Puri between the BJP’s Sambit Patra, BJD’s Arup Patnaik and Congress leader Jay Narayan Patnaik.

Haryana’s Kurukshetra will host a triangular fight between Congress’ Abhay Singh Chautala, business tycoon Naveen Jindal of BJP and AAP’s Sushil Gupta.

With inputs from agencies