Lucknow: With about 52 per cent polling in 13 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh in the seventh and final round of voting for the Lok Sabha election, the polling process came to an end in the state and across the country on Sunday. In UP, polling was spread through all the phases beginning on April 11.
Now all eyes are on May 23 when results will be announced and the exercise to form a new government at the centre will begin. For Yogi Adityanath, it is a question of reaffirming his hold over Gorakhpur, a seat represented by him for five terms from 1998 to 2014, and by his spiritual guru Mahant Avaidyanath from 1989 to 1996.
The loss of this seat in the by-election held in 2018 after Yogi became the Chief Minister was a big embarrassment and also a trigger for the eventual alliance between the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). These two parties had put up Praveen Nishad as their joint candidate and he contested on the SP ticket.
Yogi has put in a lot of effort in the campaign this time, addressing dozens of meetings over less than a week in Gorakhpur in support of the BJP candidate Ravi Kishan, a popular Bhojpuri film actor. Others in the fray in Gorakhpur are SP’s Ram Bhual Nishad and Madhusudan Tripathi from the Congress.
The seventh round saw polling in Gorakhpur, Mahrajganj, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon, Salempur, Varanasi, Ghosi, Chandauli, Gazipur, Ballia, Mirzapur and Robertsganj, with triangular contests in each. In 2014, the BJP had won all these seats. Polling was by and large peaceful except for some skirmishes in Chandauli between rival party workers and the allegation by some villagers that workers of a party had tried to stop them from voting.
The prestige of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is at stake in this round since the former is himself a candidate from Varanasi, while Yogi’s stronghold was wrested by the Samajwadi Party in the by-election held in 2018.
Voting in Varanasi was largely peaceful but rather on the lower side. Till 4 pm, only about 47 per cent polling was recorded.
The contest here lost much of its excitement with the fielding of political lightweights by both the Congress and the SP whereas in 2014, the presence of Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had made the contest quite interesting.
