The stage is set for another round in Karnataka, where voting for 14 Lok Sabha seats will be held on Tuesday (May 7). The ruling Congress and BJP are in direct contest in the remaining 14 Lok Sabha seats in the northern districts of Karnataka. The second phase covers almost all Lingayat-dominated districts - the Congress could not win any seats here.
In the first phase of polling, 14 seats in most of the southern and coastal districts went to polls on April 26. A total of 227 candidates -- 206 men and 21 women -- are in the fray for the second phase. More than 2.59 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in 28,269 polling stations where voting will take place between 7 am to 6 pm.
The Lok Sabha seats where elections will be held on Tuesday are Chikkodi, Belgaum, Bagalkot, Bijapur, Gulbarga, Raichur, Bidar, Koppal, Bellary, Haveri, Dharwad, Uttara Kannada, Davangere and Shimoga. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP had swept all these 14 seats.
Around 1.45 lakh polling officials have been deployed across the 14 constituencies. In addition, 35,000 civil police personnel, 65 companies of Central Paramilitary forces, and armed police of other states will be deployed for the polling day.
Besides this, 4,000 micro-observers will also be on duty and 17,000 polling stations will be covered by webcasting. Davangere has the maximum number of 30 candidates, followed by 23 in Shimoga and Raichur has the least number - eight.
From the BJP, the prominent faces in the fray are former Chief Ministers Basavaraj Bommai (Haveri) and Jagadish Shettar (Balgaum), Union Ministers Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and Bhagwanth Khuba (Bidar).
Congress' Geetha Shivrajkumar (Shimoga) -- wife of actor Shivrajkumar and daughter of former CM S Bangarappa and AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge's son-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani (Gulbarga), are also in the fray.
Veteran BJP leader B S Yediyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra is contesting from Shimoga, former Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri from Uttara Kannada and ex-Minister B Sreeramulu from Bellary and retired IAS officer G Kumar Naik of Congress from Raichur. Suspended BJP leader and former Deputy CM K S Eshwarappa is also fighting from Shimoga.
Prabha Mallikarjun, wife of Minister S S Mallikarjun and daughter-in-law of veteran Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa, is in the fray from Davangere.