Voting began for 59 seats across nine districts, including Lucknow and Lakhimpur Kheri, on Wednesday in the fourth round of the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh elections.
A total of 624 candidates are in the fray for the seats spread across Terai, Awadh and Bundelkhand regions of the state. Of the 59 seats, 16 are reserved.
The key players in the fray this phase include Brijesh Pathak and Ashutish Tandon, both ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government, Rajeshwar Singh, former ED director, Aditi Singh, former Congress MLA and Abhishek Mishra and Manoj Pandey, former ministers in the Akhilesh Yadav government.
This round of voting is considered crucial for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress.
With eight seats, Lakhimpur Kheri district poses a challenge to the ruling party. Though all the seats are held by the BJP, the recent bail to Ashish Mishra, the son of Union minister Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’, who was arrested in connection with the violence that killed eight people, including four farmers on October 3, will test the ruling party.
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The four farmers were killed when a car belonging to Mishra ran them over. The families of the farmers have challenged the bail in the Supreme Court after Mishra was released from jail last week on the orders of the Allahabad High Court. The opposition has stepped up its attack against the BJP following Mishra’s release.
"Instead of March 2018-19, the BJP will celebrate 'Holi of victory' on March 10. The BJP had fielded ordinary workers, distributed tickets to them, not the ones with muscle or money power. The BJP will break its own record. The SP, BSP and the Congress collectively won't cross 100," deputy chief minister of the outgoing state government, Dinesh Sharma, told news agency ANI.
For the BJP, which won 51 of 59 seats in the 2017 Assembly polls, another challenge would be to retain its seats in the Terai region, where its MP Varun Gandhi has broken ranks to target the party’s government, at Centre and in the state.
Gandhi's Parliament constituency of Pilibhit has four seats, all of which are represented by the BJP. The area also has a sizable farmer population that opposed the farm laws. Though the three laws have been called back, the bitterness remained.
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Though the stakes are not as high for the Congress, retaining two of the five seats in Rae Bareli will be a matter of prestige. Two Congress MLAs Rakesh Singh from Harchandpur and Aditi Singh in Rae Bareli have switched sides to the BJP. Rae Bareli is the parliamentary constituency of Congress’ interim president Sonia Gandhi, who appealed to voters to support the party on February 21.
Nine Assembly seats of Lucknow will also go polling on February 23. Eight of these seats have BJP MLAs.
The ruling BJP faces a keen challenge from Akhilesh Yadav-led SP in Uttar Pradesh. In the last Assembly polls, the party had secured a win with a three-fourths majority, with firebrand leader Yogi Adityanath being later announced as the chief minister. The SP government could win 47 seats while the Congress party won only seven.
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The SP had won four of the 59 seats in 2017, while the BSP was victorious on two seats.
With today’s Phase-4 of election, polling will be over in as many as 231 of the 403 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The remaining 172 seats will vote in three phases on February 27, March 3 and March 7, while the results will be declared on March 10, along with the results of Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipur.
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