Lok Sabha Elections Phase 6: Sambit Patra To Kanhaiya Kumar — Key Candidates And Battles

Voting for the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha election will take place on Saturday in 58 seats, across six states and two Union territories. There will be polling in 14 seats of Uttar Pradesh, eight each in West Bengal and Bihar, all the 10 seats in Haryana, seven in Delhi, six in Odisha and four in Jharkhand. The Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha constituency in Jammu and Kashmir will also go to polls.

Prominent candidates in the sixth phase include Manohar Lal Khattar, Mehbooba Mufti, Kanhaiya Kumar, Manoj Tiwari, Raj Babbar, Sambit Patra, Maneka Gandhi and Naveen Jindal.

Here is a look at the heavyweights and key battles in this phase:

Sitting Bharatiya Janata Party MP Manoj Tiwari will face-off against Indian National Congress' firebrand candidate Kanhaiya Kumar in Northeast Delhi, parts of which were affected by communal riots in 2020.

In 2019, Kumar made his election debut as a Communist Party of India candidate but faced defeat at the hands of the BJP's Giriraj Singh in Bihar's Begusarai constituency.

This time, Kumar, who joined the Congress in 2021, will look to turn the tables as he takes on Tiwari. The sitting MP had defeated Congress candidate and former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit by over 3.6 lakh votes in 2019.

The electoral landscape of Puri—a stronghold of the Biju Janata Dal since 1998—is set for a riveting showdown.

Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik has replaced three-time sitting BJD MP Pinaki Misra. He is pitted against the BJP's Sambit Patra and the Congress' Jay Narayan Patnaik.

Patra, who lost from the same seat in 2019, has landed in a huge controversy after he told a local news channel that "Lord Jagannath is a devotee of Prime Minister Narendra Modi". He had later claimed that it was a "slip of the tongue". The comments led to an uproar, with Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik terming it an "insult" to the Lord.

Mehbooba Mufti, former Chief Minister and President of the Peoples Democratic Party, is contesting against National Conference leader Mian Altaf Ahmed Larvi in the redrawn Anantnag-Rajouri constituency of Jammu and Kashmir.

The stakes are high as Zafar Iqbal Manhas of the Apni Party is also in the fray in the three-way contest. Mufti had won the seat twice in the past, while it was won by the NC in 2019.

Polling in the seat was supposed to be held on May 7, but was postponed to May 25 after several leaders, including Jammu and Kashmir BJP unit chief Ravinder Raina, had requested for rescheduling due to adverse weather conditions.

Once dominated by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Tamluk constituency in West Bengal has been a stronghold for the Trinamool Congress since 2009.

The BJP candidate and former Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay is pitted against the TMC's Debangshu Bhattacharya, who is also known for penning the famous 'Khela Hobe' song. The CPI(M)'s Sayan Banerjee is also in the fray from the seat, where one of the assembly segments is Nandigram—the seat of Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari.

Earlier this week, the Election Commission of India debarred Gangopadhyay from campaigning for 24 hours for his controversial comments on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Gangopadhyay's rulings on various education-related matters in the state had stirred a political row in the past.

The BJP's Maneka Gandhi is eyeing her second term from Sultanpur and ninth as a Member of Parliament as she looks to defeat Congress-backed Samajwadi Party candidate Ram Bhual Nishad in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur.

Gandhi is set for a solitary fight as her son Varun Gandhi was refused a party ticket from Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, and prominent party leaders, such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, have not yet campaigned in the area.

The Karnal seat will see a showdown between former Chief Minister and BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar and Haryana Youth Congress President Divyanshu Budhiraja.

Khattar, who represented Karnal in the assembly, is preparing for another innings to enter the Lok Sabha for the first time. He replaced sitting BJP MP Sanjay Bhatia from the seat.

Maratha Virender Verma, state president of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), is also contesting from the seat with support from the Indian National Lok Dal.

Haryana's Kurukshetra is set to witness a fierce fight between industrialist and Congress-turned-BJP candidate Naveen Jindal, Haryana Aam Aadmi Party chief Sushil Gupta and the INLD's Abhay Chautala.

With disclosed assets valued at Rs 1,241 crore, Jindal is the richest candidate in Phase 6 of the Lok Sabha election. The BJP's Nayab Singh had won the constituency in 2019.

The Ghatal constituency in West Bengal is set to witness a battle between two Bengali actors-turned politicians—TMC's incumbent MP Deepak Adhikari, who is popularly known as Dev, and the BJP's Hiraan Chattopadhyay. The CPI has fielded Tapan Ganguly from the seat, where one of the main issues is the long-lasting problem of floods.

Dev is a two-time MP from the seat and the Tollywood superstar has made the implementation of the Ghatal Master Plan for flood management in the area a major poll plank. As the election season unfolded, Chattopadhyay, who is an MLA from Kharagpur, has been making personal attacks at Adhikari that have made headlines in the state.

New Delhi will witness the BJP's Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late Sushma Swaraj, making her political debut. Bansuri Swaraj is pitted against the AAP's Somnath Bharti, who is a three-time MLA from Malviya Nagar.

In the past two elections, the BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi had won from the high-profile constituency.