Voting for the seventh and last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections for 54 seats began on a dull note on Monday, with only 8.5 per cent of voters exercising their right in the first two hours.
Voting started at 7 am and will end at 4 pm in Chakia (Chandauli), Robertsganj and Duddhi (Sonbhadra) seats while in the rest of the segments, it will continue till 6 pm.The districts where polls are under way in this phase are Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra.The voting percentage till 9 am is 8.58 per cent, according the ECI’s Voter Turnout app.
While Azamgarh witnessed 8.08 per cent voting, Bhadohi saw 7.41 per cent, Chandauli 8.39 per cent, Ghazipur 8.39 per cent, Jaunpur 8.99 per cent, Mau 9.97 per cent, Mirzapur 8.81 per cent, Sonbhadra 8.39 per cent and Varanasi 8.90 per cent, it said.A total of 613 candidates are in the fray on various 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.
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.Mulayam Singh Yadav had earlier campaigned for his son Akhilesh Yadav in the Karhal Assembly segment of Mainpuri.
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).Dara Singh Chauhan, who had resigned from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and had joined the SP, is contesting from Ghosi in Mau.
