UP Polls: 59 Constituencies to Go to Polls in Fourth Phase on Feb 23

GG News Bureau

Lucknow, 22^nd Feb. Voting for the fourth phase of Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls will be held in 59 constituencies on Wednesday (February 23) as curtains came down for the intense electioneering on Monday. The fate of all the 624 candidates contesting in the fourth phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections will be sealed in the Electronic Voting Machines tomorrow.

These 59 Assembly constituencies are spread across the districts of Pilibhit, Sitapur, Lakhimpur Kheri, Unnao, Hardoi, Lucknow, Banda, Rae Bareli, and Fatehpur.

Lakhimpur Kheri took over the national limelight after eight people, including four farmers, were killed after being mowed down by a car during a protest.

The BJP leader and MoS Home Ajay Kumar Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra is accused in the violence case. Yogesh Verma of BJP had won the Lakhimpur seat in the 2017 Assembly elections by defeating Samajwadi Party’s Utkarsh Verma Madhur with a formidable margin of more than 37,000 votes. The reputations of the MoS Home Ajay Mishra Teni will also be at stake in the Lakhimpur Kheri seat. Teni is a local MP, besides having been at the center of controversy after his son was named in the FIR in the incident leading to the deaths of the farmers.

Interestingly, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party have repeated their candidates. The Lakhimpur Kheri constituency caught the eyeballs in the ongoing elections because of the political war generated by the Lakhimpur Kheri violence in the Parliament and also outside.

Congress has fielded Ravi Shankar Trivedi whereas the Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded Mohan Bajpai from the Lakhimpur seat. Khushi Kinnar from the Aam Aadmi Party is contesting, while AIMIM’s Mohammad Usman Siddiqui is also in the fray.

Another keenly watched constituency in the fourth phase is the Sarojini Nagar seat in Lucknow where the former joint director of Enforcement Directorate (ED), Rajeshwar Singh, is fielded against former IIM professor and a close aide of the former CM and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, Abhishek Mishra.

Raebareli Sadar is also one of the crucial battles to watch out for with its sitting Congress MLA Aditi Singh now being a BJP candidate.

MoS Law Brijesh Pathak is facing SP candidate and two-time Corporator Surendra Singh Gandhi in the Lucknow Cantonment seat.

The UP minister Ashutosh Tandon is in the field from the Lucknow East seat against Deputy Speaker of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly Nitin Agarwal, who is the Samajwadi Party candidate.

Uttar Pradesh is witnessing a multi-cornered election contest with Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party- Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance, and the Bahujan Samaj Party as prominent contenders.

As a last-minute effort, Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath while addressing a poll campaign in Raebareli on Monday promised the launch of the Purohit Welfare Board in Uttar Pradesh for the welfare of priests, sadhus, and special scholarship for students studying Sanskrit if the BJP is re-elected to power.

Meanwhile, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, while addressing a rally in Hardoi, accused that the BJP was trying to divert people’s attention from real issues by speaking about “religion, Pakistan, and terrorism”.

Polling for the remaining three phases of the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh assembly polls will take place on February 27, March 3, and 7. The counting of votes will take place on March 10.