Voting begins for last phase of UP Assembly polls; 613 candidates in fray

TIL Desk/National/Lucknow/ Voting for the seventh and the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections began on Monday morning, with 613 candidates in the fray on 54 seats, including those falling in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary segment Varanasi. The fate of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party president Om Prakash Rajbhar and several state ministers will be decided in this round, in which 2.06 crore people are eligible to vote.

Voting will be held from 7 am to 4 pm on the Chakia (Chandauli), Robertsganj and Duddhi (Sonbhadra) seats while in the rest of the segments, it will continue till 6 pm. The districts going to the polls in this phase are Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra.

Once considered a stronghold of the Samajwadi Party, the region saw the BJP making inroads in 2017 by winning 29 seats. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) got six seats and the SP 11.

For the SP, its patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav made a rare appearance in Jaunpur to drum up support for Lucky Yadav, the son of his long-time associate the late Parasnath Yadav. Lucky Yadav is in the fray from the Malhani seat.

Besides state Tourism Minister Neelkanth Tiwari (Varanasi South), other ministers in the fray in the last leg of the elections are Anil Rajbhar (Shivpur-Varanasi), Ravindra Jaiswal (Varanasi North), Girish Yadav (Jaunpur) and Ramashankar Singh Patel (Marihan-Mirzapur).