BJP suffered setbacks from fifth phase of LS polls onwards: Kapil Sibal

New Delhi [India], May 25 : Senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal on Saturday claimed that from the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election onwards, the BJP has faced setbacks and people have started talking not about Ram temple but about issues like inflation and unemployment.
"The information that I am receiving is that in the fifth and sixth phases, there have been a lot of changes. The pace that is in the fifth and sixth phases was not there in the earlier phases. People are not talking about the Ram temple but inflation, unemployment and other issues that have an impact on local levels and BJP will see a lot of damage in these phases," Sibal told ANI.
Sibal said that in the 2019 general election, the BJP got a considerable portion of the votes of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes communities but this time this was not the case.
"If the equation of Muslim, OBC, SC, ST and Yadavas is made, this will hurt them (BJP). Don't take it seriously (BJP's 400 paar slogan). They have made a joke," he said.
The polling for the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha election is ongoing. In this phase, the polling is being done for 58 parliamentary constituencies spread over six states and two Union Territories.
The sixth phase of Lok Sabha polls includes eight seats in Bihar, all 10 seats in Haryana, one seat in Jammu and Kashmir, four in Jharkhand, all seven seats in Delhi, six in Odisha, 14 in Uttar Pradesh, and eight in West Bengal. A total of 889 candidates are in the fray.
Voting for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha is also underway in the sixth phase. Assembly elections are being held in the state simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections in the state.
All parliamentary seats in Delhi and Haryana went to polls in this phase.
Some key seats in this phase include New Delhi, North-East Delhi, North-West Delhi and Chandni Chowk in the national capital and Sultanpur and Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag-Rajouri, West Bengal's Tamluk, Medinipur, Haryana's Karnal, Kurukshetra, Gurgaon, Rohtak and Odisha's Bhubaneswar, Puri and Sambalpur are some of the other key seats. Stakes are high for the BJP as also for the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, and other constituents of the INDIA bloc in this phase of the election.
Polling has already been completed on 428 parliamentary constituencies for 25 states and UTs in the first five phases of general elections. Over 11.13 crore voters include 5.84 crore male, 5.29 crore female and 5120 third gender electors are eligible to exercise their franchise in the sixth phase of Lok Sabha polls. Around 11.4 lakh polling officials will be involved in conducting this phase of the election.
The Lok Sabha elections will be completed on June 1 after the seventh phase of polls in which voters from 57 constituencies will exercise their franchise. The results will be declared on June 4.