New Delhi, May 06 2009: The staggered Lok Sabha polls will tomorrow enter its fourth and penultimate phase for electing 85 MPs and the contenders include BJP President Rajnath Singh and Congress' Pranab Mukherjee.

As many as 9.46 crore people are eligible to vote in this phase that will see polling in eight States and union territories, including Delhi.

Polling would commence at 0700 hrs and close at 1700 hrs in 1.29 lakh booths, which would be manned by over six lakh election officials.

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav (Mainpuri) and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad (Pataliputra), National Conference's Farooq Abdullah (Srinagar), Congress' Kapil Sibal (Chandni Chowk), Sachin Pilot (Ajmer), Shekhar Suman (Patna Saheb), Ajay Maken (New Delhi), BJP's Shatrughan Sinha (Patna Saheb), HJC's Bhajan Lal (Hisar) and RLD's Ajit Singh (Baghpat) are among the prominent candidates in this phase.

Since the polls began on April 16, election has been completed to 372 seats of the 545-member Lok Sabha.

Polls are held only to 543 seats, as two members are nominated from the Anglo-Indian community.

Polling to all the 25 seats in Rajasthan, 10 in Haryana and seven in Delhi will be completed at one go.

Elections will also be held to three seats in Bihar, one in Jammu and Kashmir, four in Punjab, 18 in Uttar Pradesh and 17 in West Bengal.

Rajnath Singh is contesting his first LS polls from Ghaziabad Lok Sabha seat, while Mukherjee is fighting his second from Jangipur.

Lalu Prasad, who has already entered polls from the Saran Lok Sabha seat, is hedging his bets by contesting from Pataliputra.

Former BJP strongman Kalyan Singh is fighting as an independent with the support of Samajwadi Party from Etah.

The build-up to this phase of polls was marked by hectic electioneering, with star campaigners of the UPA, the NDA and the Third Front traversing through the country to tell voters why the other alliance should not be elected, while actively sending out feelers to one another for post-poll tie-ups.

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi yesterday said: "After elections, all options are open....

We have always been open to post-poll alliances".

He appeared to reach out to Nitish Kumar, whose JD-U is an NDA constituent, and Chandrababu Naidu, whose TDP is part of the Third Front.

He also expressed the hope that Left parties would back Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister.The Left as well as Nitish promptly said thanks, but no thanks.

The Congress has been working overtime to defend Delhi, which has been under the party's rule for 11 years now, although it was once known as a BJP fort.

In neighbouring Haryana, 210 candidates, including former Chief Minister Bhajan Lal, industrialist Navin Jindal and former cricketer Chetan Chauhan, are in the fray for 10 seats.

Candidates are facing more than just genuine competition in some constituencies, including Hisar, where Bhajan Lal is up against a namesake.

Campaigning for this phase was equally heated, with rival camps stepping up the attack on one another.

Rahul Gandhi was unforgiving in his criticism of BJP's PM hopeful LK Advani, saying the BJP's 'Iron Man' should have resigned as the Home Minister once he realised that a Cabinet colleague of his had escorted terrorists in return for the release of hostages in Kandahar.

The BJP, too, continued its criticism of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, calling him "weak".

"If the Prime Minister only wants to clear files while the political decisions are taken by Sonia Gandhi, then I am afraid what we need is a cabinet secretary and not a Prime Minister," BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley said.

In the midst of the campaign heat, the Prime Minister too launched an attack on the Left, which withdrew support to the UPA over the civil nuclear deal with the US, saying that its policies are "retrograde" and "lack far-sightedness".

The issue of Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi's name being dropped from CBI's most wanted list in connection with the Bofors scam spilled over into this round of campaigning as well, but Rahul Gandhi said he was far from embarrassed by the development and chose to call it a "dead" issue.

As many as 12,048 villages and hamlets in eight States have been identified as prone to vulnerable to intimidation of voters in the fourth phase.

In Rajasthan, two choppers have been deployed with RAC jawans for aerial surveillance, besides 250 companies of CRPF and RAC personnel.

The Election Commission said 60,405 people have been specifically identified are trouble makers across the States going to polls.

In all 1,315 candidates including 119 women are in the fray for the 85 Lok Sabha seats in the fourth phase, Deputy Election Commissioner R Balakrishnan said.

Though the polling would be held from 0700 hrs to 1700 hrs, four assembly segmentsIslampur and Hilsa in Nalanda Parliamentary constituency and Masauri and Paliganj in Patliputra Lok Sabha constituency �in Bihar would see voting close at 1500 hrs, he said.

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