Three hundred and two seats done, 241 more to go. On Monday, voters across 72 constituencies in nine states are exercising their franchise in the fourth phase of the Lok Sabha elections. Over 950 candidates are in the fray for this round.

This will be the last phase for Maharashtra, where 17 seats are up for grabs, including six constituencies from India's financial capital, Mumbai. For Rajasthan, this will be the first round of voting, with 13 seats at stake. Same number of constituencies will vote in Uttar Pradesh as well. In 2014, the BJP had won 12 out of these 13 seats in UP and overall it had won 45 of the 72 constituencies of the fourth phase, most of which are in the Hindi heartland.

CNBC-TV18 spoke with Hindustan Times Political Editor Vinod Sharma, senior journalist Sharat Pradhan, BJP spokesperson Sudesh Verma and Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh to understand whether Prime Minister Modi's show of strength and Congress' decision to not field Priyanka Gandhi from Varanasi have an impact on the fourth phase and which other factors will influence the decision of voters in this round.

According to Vinod Sharma, “PM's mega show in Banaras was perhaps planned in anticipation of a fight with Priyanka Gandhi, which hasn't happened and it is now almost a cakewalk for Modi. The PM’s focus is on showing himself as the biggest defender of India's national security and some of the statements that he has made especially with reference to Sri Lanka are only an affirmation of the fact that he and the BJP are relying more on the national security issue than on the government’s performance over the past 5 years."

"In the first three phases, the voting percentage hasn't gone up. The prime minister again appealed to the voters to turn out in larger numbers. The BJP's strategy was predicated on higher turnout of voters because they felt if they have to neutralise anti-incumbency and retain the number of seats that they won in the previous elections and perhaps add more to that then they need a higher turnout of voters and that has not happened. So, this election is very difficult to decipher till now," Sharma opined.

Pradhan thinks it is a big respite for the BJP that Priyanka is not contesting from Varanasi. “I always felt that it was a hype created more in the media than from the Congress because Priyanka never said that she would contest," he observed.

"We do not agree that Priyanka has done a charity by running away from Varanasi because if she thought that it would have been difficult for Modi then she should have contested, why has she surrendered to Modiji? Everybody was expecting that she would fight based on her own statements," says Verma,

Vallabh disagrees with this view, "Nobody had said in Congress that Priyanka is going to contest. Has she contested in the past? No. I can have a counter argument that why Modi is not contesting from Raebareli? Why he fielded a small candidate who cannot secure his deposit there?" he asked.

First Published:Apr 26, 2019 11:02 PM IST