Uttar Pradesh Election 2022: The counting of votes will take place on March 10. (File)
Lucknow:
Fifty-seven seats of eastern Uttar Pradesh, spread across 10 districts, will vote today in the penultimate phase of election. Among the key candidates is Chief Minister Yogi Adiyatnath, who is contesting his first assembly poll from Gorakhpur.
Here is your 10-point cheat sheet on the sixth phase of polling:
-
With voting for 292 out of the state’s 403 assembly seats already over, the focus has shifted to the crucial Purvanchal region of the state, which has 111 seats- more than a quarter of the total.
-
The BJP had won 46 of the 57 seats in the 2017 polls. The seats are spread across Ambedkar Nagar, Balrampur, Siddharthnagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria and Ballia.
-
Yogi Adityanath, the five-time MP from his stronghold Gorakhpur, is contesting from the Gorakhpur Urban seat. In 2017, party MLA Radha Mohan Das Agrawal won the seat with a 60,000-vote margin.
-
The Samajwadi Party has pitted the wife of late Upendra Dutt Shukla, a former BJP leader, against the Chief Minister. Azad Samaj Party founder Chandrashekhar Azad is also in fray from the seat.
-
The Chief Minister’s being in the contest this time has spurred expectations of a big victory in all nine assembly seats under the Gorakhpur parliamentary constituency. In 2017, the BJP had won eight of the nine seats.
-
The outcome in this phase will largely depend on the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and Most Backward Castes (MBCs) who have influence on nearly 30 seats. The BJP is hoping to gain support from the dominant boatmen community owing to its alliance with the NISHAD Party.
-
Its key challenger, Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, is banking on ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, which has a broad support base among the Rajbhars and other MBCs. The SBSP has fielded candidates in eight seats.
-
Besides the Chief Minister, the prominent candidates in this phase include State Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu contesting from the Tamkuhi Raj seat, Samajwadi Party’s Swami Prasad Maurya from the Fazilnagar seat, and Leader of Opposition Samajwadi Party’s Ram Govind Chaudhary from the Bansdih.
-
State ministers Surya Pratap Shahi is contenting from Pathardeva, Satish Chandra Dwivedi from Itwa , Jai Pratap Singh from Bansi, Shree Ram Chauhan from Khajani , and Jai Prakash Nishad from Rudrapur .
-
Polling on the remaining 54 seats in Uttar Pradesh will be held on March 7. The votes will be counted on March 10.
