NEW DELHI 

India will hold the second phase of its marathon six-week general elections on Friday.

The mammoth exercise, the world's largest, kicked off last week as millions turned out in the first phase to elect lawmakers from 102 parliamentary constituencies in 21 states.

Overall, in seven total phases running from April 19 to June 1, voters will elect 543 lawmakers to the lower house of India's Parliament, known as the Lok Sabha, while two more will be nominated by the president.

The vote count will take place on June 4.

There are a total of 968.8 million eligible voters in the country of some 1.3 billion – 497 million men and 471 million women.

Votes will be cast at 1.05 million polling stations through more than 5.5 million electronic voting machines.

This election is primarily a battle between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the opposition alliance called INDIA, headed by the Indian National Congress.

Who is voting in phase 2?

Some 158.8 million eligible voters will cast their ballots in 88 constituencies across 13 states and union territories.

For the second round, over 1.6 million polling officials have been deployed across 167,000 polling stations, according to official data.

The biggest share of seats in this phase is 20 and 14 in the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka, followed by 13 in Rajasthan and eight each in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Madhya Pradesh's comes next with six, Bihar and Assam have five each, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal have three apiece, followed by one each in Tripura, Manipur and Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Polls will open at 7 a.m. (0130 GMT) and end at 6 p.m. (1230 GMT), with those already in queue being allowed to vote even after the deadline.

Key candidates

In total, there will be 1,202 candidates competing for the 88 seats up for grabs.

Among them are a number of prominent names, both from the ruling BJP and opposition parties, including:

- Rahul Gandhi: The scion of India's most famous political dynasty will be aiming to retain the Wayanad seat in Kerala that he won in 2019.

- Gajendra Singh Shekhawat: A minister in Modi's government, the BJP candidate is looking to win a seat in Jodhpur, Rajasthan for a third time, facing off against Karan Singh Uchiyarda of the Congress.

- Rajeev Chandrasekhar: India's junior information technology minister is contesting from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, where his main opponent is senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is seeking re-election for a fourth consecutive term.

- Bhupesh Baghel: The Congress leader and former chief minister of Chhattisgarh is running for the state's Rajnandgaon seat, competing against BJP's Santosh Pandey.

Past results

In 2019, more than 50 of the seats being contested in the second phase were swept by the BJP, while Congress had 17 – 15 of them just in Kerala.

Currently, Bihar is ruled by an NDA-allied government headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Modi's BJP, directly or under an alliance, also has power in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Manipur, Assam and Tripura.

Kerala, the only major Indian state where the BJP has never won a national seat, is governed by the opposition Left Democratic Front, while West Bengal is ruled by the All India Trinamool Congress headed by firebrand Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.