Election cycle starts with voting in J'khand today

Jharkhand will kick off crucial assembly elections on Wednesday as 13.7 million people across 43 of its 81 seats vote in the first phase of polls and bypolls will be held in 32 seats across 10 states, marking the beginning of a high-stakes round of contests.

In Jharkhand, 13,710,717 electors are eligible to vote across 15 districts, covering most of the tribal seats in Kolhan and South Chhotanagpur division, where issues of tribal identity, infiltration, reservation, and corruption dominated the campaign.

"Polling across 43 seats would be held from 7am to 5pm. Polling parties have reached all the stations," the state's chief electoral officer K Ravi Kumar said.

Eyes will also be on the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, where Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her poll debut on a seat vacated by her brother and leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. She is up against Sathyan Mokeri of the Left and Navya Haridas of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a seat that Rahul Gandhi - he chose to retain his other seat, Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh - won by 364,422 votes this summer.

Another 31 assembly seats across 10 states-Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Kerala will go to the polls.

Out of these, the highest number of seats, seven, are in Rajasthan, where the BJP will look to reverse the setback of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

These round of elections -alongside high-voltage contests on November 20 in Maharashtra and the second phase of Jharkhand are important because they will determine the momentum of national politics.

The BJP suffered some setbacks in these regions during the Lok Sabha polls but regained momentum with its unexpected victory in the Haryana polls, when it beat the Congress, defying exit poll predictions.