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UP polls: CM Yogi’s seat in focus as Uttar Pradesh votes in 6th phase today
Uttar Pradesh assembly election 2022: The penultimate phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections will seal the fate of 676 candidates, including chief minister Yogi Adityanath, in 57 constituencies spread across 10 eastern UP districts.
Polling for the sixth and penultimate phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections on Thursday will seal the fate of 676 candidates, including chief minister Yogi Adityanath, in 57 constituencies spread across 10 eastern UP districts.
Former MP Adityanath, who is currently a member of the state’s legislative council, is making his debut in the assembly polls – from Gorakhpur Urban seat. Another big name in the fray is his former cabinet colleague and now a heavyweight OBC face for the Samajwadi Party (SP), Swami Prasad Maurya, who had quit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shortly before the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh elections. Maurya is contesting from Fazilnagar (Kushinagar) seat.
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A total of 21,462,816 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the 10 eastern UP districts — Ambedkar Nagar, Balrampur, Siddharthnagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria and Ballia.
State’s chief electoral officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said all preparations for the polling have been completed and the campaign for the sixth phase ended at 6 pm on Tuesday.
Voting for 292 out of 403 assembly seats have been completed in the first five phases, while the remaining 111 seats are up for grabs in the Purvanchal region of the state. After Thursday’s voting, the remaining 54 seats will go to polls in the final phase on March 7. The results will be declared on March 10.
Other prominent leaders in the fray in the sixth phase are UP Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu from Tamkuhi Raj (Kushinagar) seat and leader of the opposition in the state assembly and senior SP leader Ram Govind Chaudhary from Bansdih (Ballia) seat.
State ministers contesting in this phase include Surya Pratap Shahi from Pathardeva (Deoria), Satish Chandra Dwivedi from Itwa (Siddharthnagar), Jai Pratap Singh from Bansi (Siddharthnagar), Shree Ram Chauhan from Khajani (Gorakhpur), Jai Prakash Nishad from Rudrapur (Deoria) and Upendra Tiwari from Phepna (Ballia).
Surendra Singh, the sitting BJP MLA from Bairia in Ballia, who joined the Vikasheel Insaan Party (VIP) after being denied a ticket by the BJP, will also be facing the electorate in this phase. VIP, a Bihar-based outfit, is a new entrant in Uttar Pradesh’s politics.
The 57 constituencies in the fray, including 11 reserved, are crucial for the BJP, which had won 46 seats in the 2017 assembly polls. The remaining 11 seats were split among Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that won five seats, SP two, Congress, Apna Dal (S), SBSP one seat each, while one Independent candidate also won in the last state polls. In 2012, the SP had won 32 seats, BJP eight, BSP nine, Congress five, Peace Party two, and the NCP one.
Adityanath’s contest from the Gorakhpur Urban seat has become interesting with SP fielding the wife of late Upendra Dutt Shukla, a former BJP leader, and firebrand Dalit leader Chandrashekhar Azad, president of Azad Samaj Party, also contesting the elections against the CM.
During the campaigning for the sixth phase, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, Adityanath, BJP president JP Nadda, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra criss-crossed the poll-bound districts, seeking votes for their respective parties.
Modi had attacked BJP’s rivals, especially SP and Congress, by tagging them as “ghor pariwarvadi” (staunch dynasts) who, he said, could never make India capable or Uttar Pradesh empowered.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra rebutted the charge by saying the BJP was against her family, which made sacrifices for the country. The SP chief accused the BJP of hatching a conspiracy for ending reservation and “selling government organisations” to the private sector.
Reservation and caste census — the issues that Akhilesh Yadav and his alliance partners raised — would come into play prominently in this region, which has OBC dominance.
Both BJP’s and SP’s smaller alliance partners are active in eastern UP. While Apna Das (S) and Nishad Party are contesting the polls in alliance with the ruling BJP, the SP alliance partners include Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and Apna Dal (K).
BJP has given four out of the 57 tickets to Nishad Party and one to Apna Dal (S) and the SP has given seven tickets to SBSP, which was a BJP ally in the 2017 polls.
According to the Uttar Pradesh police, at least 150,000 security personnel will be deployed in the sixth phase for which voting will be held at 13,930 polling stations and 25,319 polling booths under 179 police station areas.
“Nine assembly constituencies - Gorakhpur City, Bansi, Etawah, Dumariaganj, Ballia Nagar, Phephna Bairia, Sikanderpur and Bansdih - have been kept in the sensitive category,” the police said in a statement.
“In the sixth phase, a total of 824 majras and localities have been marked as vulnerable, while 2,962 polling places have been considered as critical,” it added.
The police said a total of 109 Pink Booths (women booths) have been made to specially motivate women to vote.
