In Odisha, campaigning ended this evening in 11 Lok Sabha and 77 Assembly constituencies for the second and last phase of polling on Thursday. In this phase, the fate of 98 candidates, including 11 women will be decided in the Lok Sabha elections and that of 747 candidates, including 65 women, in the Assembly polls. An electorate of over 1.55 crore voters will be exercising their franchise in 18,692 booths spread over these constituencies.

AIR correspondent reports, Campaigning in Jajpur, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Balasore, Bhadrak, Dhenkanal, Cuttack, Kendrapara, Puri, Jagatsinghpur and Bhunaneswar Lok Sabha constituencies and 77 Assembly seats coming under these Lok Sabha constituencies ended this evening.

The fate of Congress stalwart and Union Minister Srikant Jena and former Union Minister Arjun Sethi of ruling BJD, besides a host of paraliamentarin including Tathagat Satpathy, Baijayant Panda, Pinaki Mishra, Bhatruhari Mahtab of BJD will be decided on Thursday polling.

A number of ministers in the Naveen Patnaik government including Maheshwar Mohanty, Pratap Keshari Deb, Badri Narayan Patra, Bijoyshree Routray, Dr Damodar Rout and Rajanikant Singh will also be decided in this phase of elections to the state Assembly. BJP stalwart and former

minister Bijay Mohapatra and state Congress chief Jaydev Jena are also trying their luck in the Assembly elections.

Political heavyweights who campaigned during this phase of polling include Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Congress vice-President Rahul Gandhi, BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and JMM supremo Shibu Soren. Altogether 406 companies of security personnel have been deployed for poll duty.