India’s general elections entered their fifth round on Monday. The next few rounds of the seven-phase contest will determine seats in the opposition’s strongholds in the Gandhi family and the financial center of Mumbai.

Votes will be counted on June 4 and the election will conclude on June 1. The election began on April 19.

There are the fewest seats up for grabs in Monday’s phase, as 89.5 million voters will select representatives for 49 districts.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh of Lucknow and Trade Minister Piyush Goyal of Mumbai are among the well-known contenders running on Monday; both cities have had historically low election turnout.

On Sunday, the Election Commission explicitly urged citizens of those cities “to erase the stigma” associated with urban lethargy.

Just a few days after at least 14 people were killed when a large billboard crashed during a downpour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared, “Better infrastructure and more ‘ease of living’ is at the core of our vision for Mumbai.”

In addition to Wayanad in the south, which has already cast a ballot, two boroughs of the Congress party’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in politically significant Uttar Pradesh are also holding elections. Rahul Gandhi, the scion, is running for the seat of Raebareli.In India, a candidate may run for more than one seat, but they may only represent one.

Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress party and a former Raebareli member, made a moving plea to voters in an area that has been ruled by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) for the past ten years, urging people to support her son.

The Amethi candidate is Smriti Irani, the minister for women and child development. She unsettled Rahul Gandhi in 2019 to take the seat that his family had held for the last forty years.

In Kaiserganj, where the BJP is fielding a former wrestling federation chief’s son despite his father being accused of sexually assaulting female wrestlers, there is another electorate in the state that is being closely monitored.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was initially concerned about low voter turnout, and observers think this raised questions about the party’s and its allies’ hopes for a landslide victory.

Following a dismal start, more voters began to cast ballots, with an average turnout of 66.95% over the course of four stages and 69% on May 13.

Opponents of Modi have said that he is singled out for criticism because he is a Muslim minority and wants to appease radical voters. Modi is poised to serve as prime minister for a record third term.

The Congress party has refuted Modi’s repeated accusations that it is preparing to give social benefits to Muslims at the expense of underprivileged tribal tribes and Hindu castes.

Modi declared in a recent TV interview that was shown following the fourth round that he was determined “not to do Hindu-Muslim (in politics)”.

The opposition INDIA alliance, which is made up of the Congress and twelve other political parties, received a significant boost when Delhi Chief Minister and ardent opponent of Prime Minister Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, was granted interim reprieve by the court and permitted to run in the elections.