The end of Lok Sabha elections 2019 phase 3 takes us past the halfway mark with respect to the total number of seats in the lower house of Parliament.

Polling has been conducted on a total of 303 seats of the 543 constituencies that make up the Lok Sabha. Two members are appointed by the President of India thus bringing the total to 545. Voting will be held in the remaining 240 seats in the last four phases.

Voting in all five southern states and 3 Union Territories were completed with the conclusion of the third phase of Lok Sabha elections.

All 25 seats in Andhra Pradesh and all 17 seats Telangana went to polls in the first phase of the elections on 11 April. Polling was also held in the Union Territories of the one seat each in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshwadeep.

In the second phase, poling was held in 14 seats of Karnataka, 1 seat in UT of Puducherry and all 39 seats in Tamil Nadu.

In the third phase, voting was held on the remaining 14 seats in Karnataka and all 20 seats in Kerala.

The focus now shifts to the northern states.

In the coming phases – fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh – elections will be held in the remaining seats of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal besides Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

In Phase 6, all 7 seats in Delhi and all 10 Lok Sabha constituencies in Haryana will witness polling. In the last phase, which will be held on 19 May, all 13 seats in Punjab and all 4 seats in Himachal Pradesh will go to polls.

Overall turnout so far

A total of 69.45 per cent of the electorate in the 91 constituencies in 20 states which went to polls in first phase turned out to vote. EC officials said the highest voting percentage was recorded in Tripura (81.8 per cent) followed by West Bengal (81 per cent). Bihar recorded the lowest voting percentage of 50.

In the second phase, elections were held in 95 constituencies in 12 states. The voter turnout was recorded at just over 69.43 per cent. West Bengal again led with voting percentage recorded at 76.42.

The lowest percentage was recorded in Jammu-Kashmir, 45.5 per cent.

At the time of writing, the overall voter turnout in phase 3 was recorded at 61.31 per cent. West Bengal hit a hat-trick of highest voting percentage with 78.94 per cent of the electorate voting in five constituencies where polling was held – Balurghat, Maldaha Uttar, Maldaha Dakshin, Jangipur and Murshidabad. The lowest was in Jammu-Kashmir at 12.46 per cent.