Fate of Rahul, Pawar, Fernandes to be decided today

Track News Service: Over 19 crore people, more than the population of neighbouring Pakistan, are eligible to vote on Thursday to elect 140 MPs to the Lok Sabha from among big contenders including Rahul Gandhi, Sharad Pawar and George Fernandes.The second phase of the 5-round elections covers 13 States and Union Territories, but polling was already completed on Wednesday in one seat in Manipur. Also, the elections to the Assemblies of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa will be completed on Thursday. Rahul Gandhi is seeking re-election from the Gandhi family pocket-borough of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Pawar from the newly created seat of Madha in Maharashtra and Mr. Fernandes from Muzaffarpur.Other prominent candidates include the BJP’s Sushma Swaraj from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, and Ramvilas Paswan from Hajipur in Bihar. Union Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath is contesting from the Chhindwara constituency in Madhya Pradesh, while other noteworthy names include Akhilesh Prasad Singh (Purvi Champaran, Bihar), Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (Vaishali, Bihar) and Raghunath Jha (Valmikinagar, Bihar).Like in the first phase, campaigning was peaceful but was aimed at verbally bruising the opponent and sometimes one’s own allies. RJD president and UPA ally Lalu Prasad accused the Congress of also being responsible for the 1992 demolition of the 16th century Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh, an incident that had triggered a series of clashes between Hindus and Muslims.The demolition of the mosque by Hindu fanatics occurred in the then BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, but the Congress was in power at the Centre. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hit back, saying the only mistake of Congress was that it had taken the BJP government’s assurance of protecting the Mughal-era monument on face value.Continuing to target BJP’s Prime Minister-hopeful L.K. Advani, the Congress, in the midst of campaigning ahead of the round-two polling, called him a “dishonest-PM-in-waiting” saying he was “deliberately taking liberties with the truth” (with respect to the Kandahar hijack episode).A total of 2,041 candidates, including 121 women, are in the fray in this round. The States to be covered are Andhra Pradesh (20 Lok Sabha seats), Assam (11), Bihar (13), Goa (2), Jammu and Kashmir (1), Karnataka (17), Madhya Pradesh (13), Maharashtra (25), Orissa (11), Tripura (2), Uttar Pradesh (17) and Jharkhand (8).