2024 Lok Sabha Elections: Big Names Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, Hema Malini in Phase 2 Voting

The overall results for all 543 seats will be declared together on June 4. The focus will be on Kerala, a Left bastion where the stakes are high for both BJP and Congress. As many as 1,202 candidates are contesting from 88 constituencies in this phase on April 26 (Friday).

She has been representing the Mathura constituency in Lok Sabha since 2014. She describes herself as a devotee of Lord Krishna who wants to serve the people of Mathura, known as the birthplace of the deity. He is an MP from Rajya Sabha and a junior minister of State for Information Technology and Skill Development.

His profiles on government websites also describe him as an entrepreneur and a technocrat. He had lost the Congress presidential elections to Mallikarjun Kharge. This election, he takes on Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar in his stronghold.

He will try to defend his Wayanad seat against Kerala BJP chief K Surendra and the CPM’s Annie Raja. It is not known if he will try to win back his Amethi seat too, which goes to polls in Phase 5 (May 20). The BJP has fielded him from his hometown Meerut for a triangular contest against his SP and BSP rivals.

A firebrand leader, Mr. Surya is known for his spirited debates, though he isn’t unknown to controversies either. In 2022, he had courted controversy after he “mistakenly” opened the emergency exit of an IndiGo plane, and had apologized. He faces a police case in the alleged Mahadev online betting scam, which he has denounced as a “political conspiracy”.

A two-time MP from Alappuzha in Kerala (2009-19), he did not contest the 2019 elections and became a Rajya Sabha member a year later. This time, he is pitted against AM Ariff (CPM) and Sobha Surendran (BJP). He polled 80,000 votes in the 2023 assembly elections in Sheopur to become an Independent MLA.

He’s contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Barmer, taking on sitting BJP MP Kailash Choudhary and the Congress’s Ummeda Ram Beniwal.