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Campaigning for 14 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka going to polls in the first phase on April 26 will come to an end on Wednesday evening.

A total of 247 candidates -- 226 men and 21 women -- are in the fray for this round of voting in most of the southern and coastal districts.

It is a straight electoral contest between the ruling Congress and the BJP-Janata Dal (Secular) combine in the State.

While the Congress is contesting in all 14 seats, BJP has fielded nominees in 11, and its alliance partner JD(S) in three -- Hassan, Mandya and Kolar.

Besides the three, the segments where elections will be held on Friday are: Udupi-Chikmagalur, Dakshina Kannada, Chitradurga, Tumkur, Mysore, Chamarajanagar, Bangalore Rural, Bangalore North, Bangalore Central, Bangalore South and Chikkballapur.

The intense campaigning for the past about a month saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah leading from the front for the BJP, holding rallies and roadshows. BJP President J P Nadda, some Union Ministers and Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant too pitched in.

Veteran BJP leader and former Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa and the party's state president B Y Vijayendra also campaigned extensively.

Congress president M Mallikarjun Kharge, senior leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar and Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy were among the prominent names who led the charge for the party.

And for the JD(S), it was the 90-year-old party patriarch and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, who led the campaign.

Chikkaballapur has a maximum number of 29 candidates, followed by 24 in Bangalore Central and Dakshina Kannada has the least number - nine.

Kumaraswamy from Mandya, his brother-in-law and noted cardiologist C N Manjunath from Bangalore Rural on a BJP ticket, erstwhile Mysuru royal family scion Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar from Mysore, also from the BJP, and state Congress President Shivakumar's brother and MP D K Suresh from Bangalore Rural, are among the prominent candidates in the fray in the first phase.

The state has a total of 28 Lok Sabha segments. The remaining 14 constituencies, mostly in the northern districts, will go to polls on May seven.

Itamar Ben Gvir, a notorious far-right Israeli minister, has suggested that some Palestinians could be “killed” instead of being kidnapped during the savage war in Gaza.
 
The minister made remarks during an Israeli war cabinet meeting where he questioned the necessity of the detention of a large number of Palestinians.

“Why are there so many arrests? “Can’t you kill some? Do you want to tell me they all surrender? What are we to do with so many arrested? It’s dangerous for the soldiers.” Ben-Gvir was quoted as asking the Israeli military's chief of staff Herzi Halevi.

The minister also reportedly demanded that the army shoot Palestinian women and children in the besieged Palestinian territory to “protect” the Israeli forces.

Halevi briefed ministers who attended the cabinet meeting on the military campaign in Gaza and highlighted that hundreds of Palestinians had surrendered to the occupying forces.

Ben Gvir recently also called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners to ease overcrowding in the jails. The minister said that applying the death penalty to Palestinian detainees was the “right” solution to tackle the problem of prison overcrowding.

Israel soldiers have abducted more than 5,000 of Palestinians during their ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The Gaza media office has said that Palestinian prisoners were undergoing "the worst kinds of torture" in Israeli jails.

Palestinian rights group Addameer earlier this month said Israel was holding 9,500 Palestinian political prisoners, not including those taken from the Gaza Strip.

Israel has arrested thousands of Palestinians since 7 October. Those detained, often without charge, describe regular beatings and a solitary daily meal designed simply to keep them alive.

Palestinians taken prisoner or hostage from both the West Bank and Gaza have given testimonies detailing horrific and sadistic abuse and torture by their Israeli jailers including beatings, verbal abuse, sexual abuse and rape, breaking of limbs, burns, being stripped naked, and forced drug taking.

The BJP has opened its account in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. The party's candidate from Gujarat's Surat constituency, Mukesh Dalal, has won the polls as all his opponents are now out of the fray.

BJP's Mukesh Dalal elected unopposed from the Surat Lok Sabha seat after all other candidates withdrew from the contest, the party's Gujarat unit chief CR Paatil said today. Today was the deadline for withdrawing nominations.

The nominations of the Congress party's Surat candidate and his substitute were rejected by the returning officer over alleged discrepancies in paperwork, a development that the Congress called an attempt at "match-fixing".

"Surat has presented the first lotus to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I congratulate our candidate for Surat Lok Sabha seat Mukesh Dalal for getting elected unopposed," Mr Paatil posted on the microblogging website X, referring to the BJP's election symbol.

Eight candidates - seven of them independents - and Pyarelal Bharti of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) withdrew their papers.

The nomination papers of the Congress's Surat candidate Nilesh Kumbhani was rejected on Sunday after the district returning officer Saurabh Parghi found discrepancies in the signatures of the proposers.

The nomination form of Suresh Padsala, the Congress's substitute candidate from Surat, was also found invalid.

The returning officer had said the four nomination forms submitted by the two Congress candidates did not appear genuine. The proposers, in their affidavits, had said they had not signed the forms themselves, the returning officer said in the order.

Congress lawyer Babu Mangukiya said the party will approach the high court and the Supreme Court for relief.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh in a post on X said the Surat developments indicate "democracy is under threat". "Our elections, our democracy, Babasaheb Ambedkar's Constitution - all are under a generational threat. This is the most important election of our lifetime," Mr Ramesh said.

Mr Ramesh alleged the "distress" of micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) owners and the business community in PM Modi's "Anyay Kaal" and their anger have "spooked the BJP so badly that they are attempting to match-fix the Surat Lok Sabha polls, which they have won consistently since the 1984 Lok Sabha elections."