New Delhi:
The high voltage campaign in the Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday came to an end in 117 seats spread across 12 states going to polls on Thursday in the sixth of nine phases of polling.
The campaign drew to a close at 6 PM when leaders wound up public addresses and workers fanned out for house-to-house canvassing 36 hours ahead of polling.
Prominent leaders whose electoral fortunes will be decided include Union ministers Salman Khurshid, Milind Deora, Namo Narayan Meena, Jitendra Singh and Tariq Anwar, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal, SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, President Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijit, actor-turned-politician Hema Malini of BJP and former cricketer Mohd Azharuddin.
Seeking to exploit national as well as local issues to the hilt, leaders of major political parties raised contentious issues, inviting complaints from opponents that they were making hate speeches.
Altogether 2,087 candidates figure in the sixth phase.
Polling will take place in Tamil Nadu (39 seats), Maharashtra (19), Uttar Pradesh (12), Madhya Pradesh (10), Bihar and Chhattisgarh (7 each), Assam and West Bengal (6 each), Rajasthan (5), Jharkhand (4) and Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir (1 each).
The single-phase polling in all the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu will decide the fate of over 800 candidates from AIADMK, DMK, BJP, Congress and DMDK besides others.
The high-decibel vote canvassing exercise was dominated by a series of barbs, charges and counter-charges as arch rivals DMK and AIADMK are eyeing the results as a self assessment exercise ahead of assembly polls, just two years away.
Top leaders across the political spectrum--Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, L K Advani, Prakash Karat, J Jayalalithaa, M Karunanidhi and M K Stalin-- wooed the 5.5 crore voters.
The Gujarat Chief Minister himself addressed a series of rallies in anticipation of his party-led NDA returning a significant number of seats, while non-NDA parties indulged in Modi-bashing almost everywhere.
Jayalalithaa, nurturing larger national ambitions, trained her guns on BJP, following accusations that her AIADMK was the 'B-Team' of the saffron party.
