Voting for the sixth and the penultimate phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections began on Thursday morning, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and several prominent faces among 676 candidates, who are contesting on 57 seats spread across 10 districts. The voting started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm. Around 2.15 crore people are eligible to vote in this phase. Till now, voting for 292 of the 403 Assembly seats has been completed.

The final phase of the elections on the remaining 54 seats will be held on March 7. The districts where polling is being held on Thursday are Ambedkar Nagar, Balrampur, Siddharth Nagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria and Ballia. Among the 676 candidates in the fray in this phase are CM Yogi Adityanath from Gorakhpur Urban and state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu from Tamkuhi Raj seat. Swami Prasad Maurya, who was a minister in the Adityanath government and had quit the BJP to join the Samajwadi Party, is contesting from Fazilnagar.

The Five Crucial Seats Going to Polls in the 6th Phase

Gorakhpur (Urban)

Gorakhpur Sadar seat has been BJP’s stronghold for nearly 31 years, and Yogi Adityanath, who has been an MP from Gorakhpur several times, will be contesting his first-ever assembly election from there. In the 2017 election, he entered the state Assembly through the Legislative Council.

Adityanath is the head of the Gorakhnath temple, the high seat of the Nath monastic sect founded by Matsyendranath in the 10th century. The temple is a politically influential shrine. The Chief Minister is facing Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad from the Gorakhpur Urban constituency.

The SP has fielded late BJP Upendra Dutt Shukla’s widow Shubhawati Shukla against Adityanath in Gorakhpur, seeking to split the vote, banking on chunk of anti-Thakur votes in Gorakhpur.

Padrauna

The western Uttar Pradesh seat with a sizeable Muslim population will witness BSP’s Pavan Kumar Upadhyay, Congress’ Mohammed Zahiruddin, SP’s Vikrama Yadav, and BJP’s Manish Jaiswal battle it out in the sixth phase of UP polls. Padrauna is the home constituency of Congress-turned-BJP leader RPN Singh. Meanwhile, AIMIM too has fielded its candidate Javed Khan from this seat.

Tamkuhiraj

State Congress president and one of Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s closest confidantes Ajay Kumar Lallu is contesting from Tamkuhi Raj constituency in Kushinagar district. In 2012, Lallu won the seat after defeating BJP’s Nand Kishor Mishra by a margin of 5,860 votes. In 2017, he was re-elected by defeating the BJP’s Jagadish Mishra by a margin of 18,114 votes.

Deoria

The Deoria seat, held by the BJP’s Janmejay Singh since 2012, will see UP CM Yogi Aditynath’s close aide and media adviser Shalab Mani Tripathi running for the polls against BSP’s Ramsharan Singh Sainthawar, SP’s Ajay Pratap this time. Janmejay Singh’s sudden demise in 2020 necessitated bypoll that was won by BJP’s Dr Satya Prakash Mani Tripathi, an influential leader in the Tripathi community.

Itwa

The seat will see a fight between incumbent BJP MLA Dr Satish Chandra Dwivedi and SP veteran Mata Prasad Pandey, the 79-year-old former UP speaker who won the seat 6 times – 1980, 1985, 1989, 2002, 2007 and 2012.

In 2017, BJP’s Dwivedi defeated Pandey and BSP’s Arshad Khursheed. Other candidates in fray are BSP’s Harishankar Singh and Congress’ Khursheed.

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