Voters queue up to cast their votes at a polling station.
Credit: PTI Photo
The Lok Sabha elections in Uttarakhand will be held in a single phase on April 19, 2024. Uttarakhand has a total of 5 Lok Sabha constituencies.
Uttarakhand, the first state to pass the Universal Civil Code is gearing up for elections and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is looking to hoist the saffron flag yet again in all five Lok Sabha seats in the face of an indomitable opposition who is hoping to open their accounts after a ten years.
BJP won from all the parliamentary constituencies in the state in both the 2014 and 2019 general elections.
In 2019, BJP got a massive 61.01 per cent vote share, while Indian National Congress (INC) received 31.40 per cent. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) stood third, with 4.48 per cent vote share.
While two Lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand -- Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar and Almora -- are located in Kumaon region, the remaining three seats of Haridwar, Tehri Garhwal and Garhwal (Pauri) are in the Garhwal region.
Union Minister of state for tourism and defence Ajay Bhatt had won the Nainital-Udham Singh Nagar seat in 2019, defeating former chief minister Harish Rawat by 3,39,096 votes. His victory margin was the biggest of the four other winning BJP candidates.
The other seat in Kumaon region is Almora, the lone reserved (SC) seat in the hill state. Ajay Tamta of the BJP has been winning it since 2014. In 2019 he had defeated Pradeep Tamta of the Congress by 2,32,986 votes.
In Garhwal (Pauri), former chief minister Tirath Singh Rawat had defeated BJP stalwart Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri's son Manish, a poll debutante on a Congress ticket, by 3,02,669 votes in 2019.
Tehri royal Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah had won from Tehri Garhwal for a third time in a row in 2019 defeating Congress' Pritam Singh by 3,00,586 votes, while former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had defeated Congress' Ambrish Kumar in Haridwar by 2,58,729 votes.
It was Pokhriyal's second consecutive poll victory from the seat in 2019. In 2014 he had defeated Harish Rawat's wife Renuka on the seat by 1,77,822 votes.
(With PTI Inputs)