Lucknow : Voters in two assembly constituencies of Sonbhadra district would for the first time elect their MLAs hailing from Scheduled Tribe (ST) today in the seventh and final phase of UP assembly elections.
The two assembly constituencies which have been reserved for STs this time are Obra and Duddhi.
In the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly, there are 317 general seats while 84 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) and two for Scheduled Tribes (ST).
“STs constitute almost 36 percent of Duddhi’s voters, while 18 percent of the population of Obra assembly constituency is that of the STs,” said Vijay Singh Gond, who has been MLA from Duddhi seven times on different party tickets.
Gond (65), who is contesting this time on a BSP ticket, said that Duddhi is one of the biggest blocks in UP. “It is because of this that we are demanding that Duddhi is made a separate district. The demand to make Duddhi a district has been going on since March 4, 1989, when Sonbhadra was carved out from Mirzapur, but in the last 5 years, the agitation has intensified,” he said.
He said that even during the British Rule, Duddhi was a separate administrative unit, and was governed by a different set of rules. “It was not a part of any district at that time,” he claimed.
