New Delhi, April 22 2009: Over 194 million people, more than the population of neighbouring Pakistan, are eligible to vote tomorrow to elect 140 MPs to the Lok Sabha from among big contenders including Rahul Gandhi, Sharad Pawar and George Fernandes.

The second phase of the five-round elections covers 13 States and Union Territories, but polling was already completed today in one seat in Manipur.

Also, the elections to the assemblies of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa will be completed tomorrow.

Rahul Gandhi is seeking re-election from the Gandhi family pocket-borough of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, Pawar from the newly created seat of Madha in Maharashtra and Fernandes from Muzaffarpur.

Other prominent candidates include the BJP's Sushma Swaraj from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, and Ramvilas Paswan from Hajipur in Bihar.

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath is contesting from the Chhindwara constituency in Madhya Pradesh, while other noteworthy names include Akhilesh Prasad Singh (Purvi Champaran, Bihar), Raghuvansh Prasad Singh (Vaishali, Bihar) and Raghunath Jha (Valmikinagar, Bihar).

Like in the first phase, campaigning was peaceful but was aimed at verbally bruising the opponent and sometimes one's own allies.

RJD president and UPA ally Lalu Prasad accused the Congress of also being responsible for the 1992 demolition of the 16th century Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh, an incident that had triggered a series of clashes between Hindus and Muslims.

The demolition of the mosque by Hindu fanatics occurred in the then BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, but the Congress was in power at the Centre.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hit back, saying the only mistake of Congress was that it had taken the BJP Government's assurance of protecting the Mughal-era monument on face value.

Continuing to target BJP's Prime Minister-hopeful LK Advani, the Congress, in the midst of campaigning ahead of the round-two polling, called him a "dishonest-PM-in-waiting" saying he was "deliberately taking liberties with the truth" (in respect to the Kandahar hijack episode) .

A total of 2,041 candidates, including 121 women, are in the fray in this round.

The states to be covered are Andhra Pradesh 20 Lok Sabha seats, Assam 11, Bihar 13, Goa two, Jammu and Kashmir one, Karnataka 17, Madhya Pradesh 13, Maharashtra 25, Orissa 11, Tripura two, Uttar Pradesh 17 and Jharkhand eight.

At the end of the second phase, polls would be completed to 265 seats, just seven short of the magic number that parties need to form a government in the 545-member house.

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

A total of 19.48 crore voters would be eligible to exercise their franchise in 2.23 lakh polling stations, Deputy Election Commissioner R Balakrishnan said, adding that polling personnel have already been dispatched in advance to places in Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Bihar.

Some of these States witnessed poll related violence in the first phase of polling on April 16.Naxals attacks left 19 people killed then.

"In the second phase, 26,872 villages and hamlets have been identified for intimidation and other possible problems," Balakrishnan said.

Voting would commence at 0700 hrs and close at 1700 hrs, except in naxal-infested areas where it would end at 1500 hrs.

voters would be casting their ballots through Electronic Voting Machines, which were first introduced in a by-election in Kerala in 1982 .

The round two elections will also see polling completed to the State Assemblies of Andhra Pradesh (140 of 294 seats) and Orissa (77 of 147 seats) .

The Andhra assembly elections will decide the fate of Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, his rival Chandrababu Naidu and actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi among others.

In Orissa, BJD chief Naveen Patnaik is aiming for a third straight term in office.

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