Brisk start to polling for Maharashtra’s 11 LS seats

Mumbai: Voting started on a brisk note with people, including many first-timers, queuing up at many polling stations in the fourth phase of voting for 11 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra, officials said here on Monday.

Voting started on a peaceful note in the 11 seats sprawling across three regions in the state — Shirdi, Nandurbar, Jalgaon, Raver, Jalna (in north Maharashtra), Beed and Aurangabad (Marathwada), Ahmednagar, Pune, Maval and Shirur (western Maharashtra).

Early-bird voters, candidates of various political parties, celebs, youngsters and others hurried to their polling centres in Pune, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Beed, and others, hoping to beat the summer heat as the day temperatures have been hovering around 40 degrees Celsius for the past few days.

Compared with the past two LS elections, the political horizon is virtually unrecognisable, party splits, strange permutations and combinations, break-ups and new alliances, that have made candidates of all parties edgy.

For instance, the Shiv Sena founded by the late Balasaheb Thackeray has split, the Nationalist Congress Party launched by Sharad Pawar broke up, the alliance between Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen was severed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed four rallies, Ahmednagar, Beed, Nandurbar and Pune.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressed one rally in Pune, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra did a rally in Nandurbar along with the Congress President in Nandurbar.

Pawar has addressed half a dozen rallies in Ahmednagar, Beed, Pune, Shirur, Thackeray has followed suit with around six rallies in Shirur, Maval, Pune, Ahmednagar and Aurangabad in the past few days, besides other senior leaders of all the parties in the fray.