Kumaraswamy meets Sonia, Deve Gowda to face media Wednesday

Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy late Tuesday met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, giving the jitters to the Left parties, though he maintained his party was not quitting the Third Front. His father and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda will address the media Wednesday, possibly to clarify the party's position.


In Bangalore, as news of Kumaraswamy's meeting with Gandhi spread, JD-S chief Deve Gowda called a press conference for Wednesday.

A JD-S points person for media interactions sent SMSes saying Deve Gowda will meet the media at his residence, thought the message did not give details.

"I met madame (Gandhi) and discussed the Karnataka political activity," Kumaraswamy told reporters after the meeting.

"There is no question of leaving the Third Front. I request the country (constituencies going to the polls Wednesday) to vote for the Third Front," he added.

However, the nearly two-hour long meeting that came just four days ahead of the Lok Sabha results, was percieved as the JD-S getting closer to the Congress.

Late in the evening, Kumarswamy was seen driving into Gandhi's 10 Janpath residence, attempting to avoid mediapersons.

TV channels soon aired the visuals of his car entering the residence with Kumaraswamy apparently trying to cover his face with handkerchief. He told reporters that he was only wiping the sweat off.

The JD-S-Congress meeting is viewed as a jolt to the Left parties, which are trying to form an anti-Congress, anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government after the elections.

It was JD-S, after all, that initiated efforts to form the Third Front by organising a rally at Tumkur, near Bangalore in March.

The unscheduled meeting would be the second shock for the Left parties. Two days ago, one of the key Third Front parties, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) of K. Chandrasekhar Rao, attended a rally organised by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Ludhiana.

JD-S ties with the Left, particularly the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is a bit strained as the biggest Left party scuttled renomination of the lone JD-S Lok Sabha member from Kerala, M.P. Veerendra Kumar.

Deve Gowda has a reputation as tough bargainer and the Congress will have to concede a lot in Karnataka if it is going to win him over to its side.

Asked to comment on the meeting, Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the party was these days holding "informal meetings" with other "secular parties" to form post-poll alliances.

"We welcome all the secular parties," Singhvi told a TV channel, refusing to give any details about Kumaraswamy's meeting with Gandhi.

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Polling begins in West Bengal

Polling began Wednesday morning for 11 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in the final phase of the general elections, which will decide the fate of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

After the first two rounds of polling in the state April 30 and May 7, the voting now covers Kolkata and its two adjoining districts of South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas.

Pollign began at 7 a.m. and paramilitary personnel stood guard at all voting stations in the metropolis, where every booth has been declared sensitive.

Poll pundits have predicted a close fight between the ruling Left Front and a resurgent Trinamool Congress and its alliance partner the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI).

The fate of 100 candidates, including Banerjee and eight other women, will be decided by 13.8 million electors across 17,136 polling booths.

Eyeing a sixth straight win, Banerjee is in the fray from her Kolkata South constituency against old foe Rabin Deb of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

In the 2004 election, Left Front major CPI-M had won 10 of the 11 seats, with Banerjee retaining Kolkata South.

The Trinamool is fighting 10 seats, leaving one to SUCI.

Of West Bengal's 42 seats, 11 went to the polls April 30 and 17 voted May 7.

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'Environment very much an issue in this campaign'

Environment was an integral part of the issues discussed during this election campaign, says one of the top environmentalists in India.

As the country Wednesday ended the long-drawn balloting process to elect the 15th Lok Sabha, many observers have commented on how this has been an "issue-less" election campaign.

"But don't look for a national issue. Look at the local issues, which have been at the forefront, and you will see how basic environmental questions have been a part of the dialogue during this campaign," Sunita Narain, director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), told IANS.

Narain said that throughout the country, voters had been asking candidates "serious questions on water scarcity, on farming, and various similar issues" and candidates had been dealing with them, with each major party setting out its agenda on how it would tackle these problems.

"Look at the environment as a question of survival at the local level, and you will see how it is an integral part of this campaign," Narain said. "It cannot be otherwise."

She talked about how the mining project of the Vedanta group had become a major poll issue in Orissa. "The Congress has promised the voters that if it comes to power, it will stop the mining project, while the BJD (Biju Janata Dal) has said it will go ahead with it. That's the issue on which the election has been fought in that part of the country."

In Himachal Pradesh, voters have forced the candidates to state what they plan to do to address the problem of dwindling water supplies. Bangalore residents fed up of traffic pile-ups and the resultant air pollution have asked candidates what they plan to do to improve public transport. In West Bengal's Sundarbans delta, candidates have been asked how they plan to fight sea level rise, caused by global warming.

While welcoming the entry of these issues in the political process, a senior official in the Ministry of Environment and Forests rued that the long drawn poll process had brought India's preparation for a global climate pact to a virtual standstill.

The pact to combat climate change is expected to be finalised by this December, and a key preparatory meet is scheduled early June. The official said that unless India had concrete proposals to take to the June meeting, it could expect to be pilloried by many industrialised countries.

India is now the world's fifth highest contributor of greenhouse gases that are leading to global warming. The country is also one of those worst affected by climate change, which is causing more frequent and more damaging droughts, floods and storms, raising the sea level and adversely affecting farm output.

The outgoing United Progressive Alliance government unveiled a National Action Plan on Climate Change June 30 last year, but details about the activities in the eight areas of action identified by the plan had not been fleshed out before the country went into poll mode.

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Voting begins in Uttar Pradesh

Polling began Wednesday morning in 14 of Uttar Pradesh's 80 Lok Sabha seats in the fifth and final phase of the general elections.

"Polling began at 7 a.m. after a routine mock poll by officials at all the 20,807 polling stations," deputy state election officer Atiq Ahmed told IANS.

As many as 203 candidates, including 15 women, are in the fray for the 14 seats. Polling in the other 66 seats was conducted in a staggered manner April 16, April 23, April 30 and May 7.

The constituencies going to the polls Wednesday are Rampur, Pilibhit, Budaun, Moradabad, Dharhaura, Bijnore, Barielly, Aonla, Shahjahanpur, Kheri, Sambhal, Amroha, Nagina and Saharanpur. They fall in western Uttar Pradesh, covering a large part of the agriculturally rich 'terai' belt.

About 19.5 million people are eligible to decide the fate of the candidates, prominent among whom were filmstar turned politician Jaya Prada of the Samajwadi Party, cricketer turned politician Mohammad Azharuddin of the Congress, Bhartiya Janata Party's rabble rouser Varun Gandhi and his mother Maneka Gandhi.

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Polling starts in Himachal Pradesh

All the four Lok Sabha seats of Himachal Pradesh went to the polls amid tight security Wednesday in the fifth and final phase of general elections.

Electors across the state could be seen reaching polling stations even before voting started at 7 a.m.

"There has been no report of any delay in starting the poll process," state chief electoral officer Anil Khachi told IANS.

Thirty-one candidates, including nine independents, are in the fray for the four seats - Shimla (reserved for Scheduled Castes), Kangra, Mandi and Hamirpur.

The main contest is between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Congress leader and five-time Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh is pitted against the BJP's three-time MP Maheshwar Singh from Mandi.

Two sitting Congress MPs, Dhani Ram Shandil and Chander Kumar, have been fielded by the party in Shimla and Kangra respectively against the BJP's Virender Kashyap and Rajan Sushant.

From Hamirpur, the Congress has fielded BJP rebel Narinder Thakur against the BJP's sitting MP Anurag Thakur, the son of Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal.

For the first time, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has fielded a candidate from the Mandi seat - Onkar Shad, a technocrat, who is expected to dent the Congress' winning margin.

While the Bhaujan Samaj Party (BSP) has fielded candidates for all the four seats, the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) has fielded one candidate from Kangra only.

The Election Commission has set up 7,253 polling stations in the state to enable 4,604,832 voters to exercise their franchise through 11,000 electronic voting machines (EVMs).

The highest polling station in the state has been set up at an elevation of over 15,000 feet at Hikkam in Lahaul and Spiti district. It has 321 electors.

The Kaa polling station in Kinnaur district has only 19 voters - the lowest in the state.

Kunnu-Charang in Kinnaur's Pooh subdivision is the remotest polling stations in the state where voters have to trudge some 10 to 20 km to vote. The polling booth has just 169 voters.

The state has 708 hypersensitive polling stations and 1,259 sensitive. Over 15,000 police, paramilitary and home guards personnel have been deployed.

Kinnaur district, adjoining China, has the highest number of 36 hypersensitive polling stations.

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Voting begins in Jammu and Kashmir

Polling began peacefully in the Baramulla and Ladakh Lok Sabha seats of Jammu and Kashmir Wednesday morning.

In Baramulla constituency, voting started on a low key in the towns of Baramulla, Sopore, Pattan and Kupwara. But in Gurez, Karnah and Uri assembly segments voters had started lining up outside the polling stations to exercise their franchise.

According to poll officials, voters had also started queuing up in all the four assembly segments of Kargil, Nobra, Zanskar and Leh in the Ladakh parliamentary constituency.

In Baramulla, there is a triangular contest between the ruling National Conference (NC) candidate Sharief-ud-Din Shariq, opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Muhammad Dilawar Mir and senior separatist leader Sajjad Gani Lone.

In Ladakh, there are four candidates in the fray but the main contest is between Congress candidate P. Namgyal and Ghulam Hassan Khan, an independent.

Authorities have placed all the senior separatist leaders, including Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, under house arrest to prevent anti-poll protests in the state's summer capital Srinagar.

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Polling underway in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry

Polling was underway Wednesday in all 39 parliamentary constituencies of Tamil Nadu and the lone seat of union territory Puducherry in the fifth and the final phase of the general elections.

Most voting stations opened at 7 a.m. However, poll officials said voting was delayed in around 40 booths in Chennai and a few others across the state owing to malfunctioning electronic voting machines (EVMs).

In all, 41.6 million people are eligible to decide the fate of 823 candidates, including 41 women, in Tamil Nadu.

Prominent candidates include Home Minister P. Chidambaram, union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar and E.V.K.S. Elangovan of the Congress; Dayanidhi Maran, M.K. Azhagiri and T.R. Baalu of the DMK; and MDMK's Vaiko.

There are 52,175 polling stations in the state. Of them, 4,043 have been declared hyper sensitive and 16,938 as sensitive.

In Puducherry, 760,000 voters are eligible to cast their votes in 852 polling stations. The main fight is between M. Ramadass of the DMK and V. Narayanasamy of the Congress.

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