Voting for the sixth phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls 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.
Polling will be held for 57 Assembly constituencies spread across 10 districts including Gorakhpur, Ambedkarnagar, Ballia, Balrampur, Basti, Deoria, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Sant Kabir Nagar and Siddharthnagar.
A total of 2,14,62,816 electorates including 1,14,63,113 males, 99,98,383 females and 1,320 third genders are expected to exercise their right to franchise to decide the fate of 676 candidates.
With 676 candidates in the fray in the sixth phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath tops the chart of the prominent faces of this phase. The Chief Minister is contesting the polls from Gorakhpur Urban. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has pitted Khwaja Shamsuddin while Samajwadi Party (SP) has fielded Subhavati Shukla, who is the wife of late Upendra Dutt Shukla, a former BJP leader, against Adityanath. Meanwhile, Congress' Chetna Pandey will also fight against Adityanath.
Besides Adityanath, prominent faces in this phase are state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu, who is contesting from Tamkuhi Raj seat, Swami Prasad Maurya, who quit as minister to join the Samajwadi Party and is contesting from Fazilnagar seat, and Leader of Opposition in the state assembly and senior Samajwadi Party leader Ram Govind Chaudhary, who is contesting from Bansdih seat.
Congress' Ajay Kumar Lallu is facing BSP's Sanjay Gupta and SP's Udaynarayan Gupta on Tamkuhi Raj seat.
SP's Swami Prasad Maurya will contest from Fazilnagar seat against BJP candidate Surendra Singh Kushwaha, the son of incumbent BJP MLA Ganga Singh Kushwaha. Maurya will face BSP's Ilyas Ansari, Congress' Sunil Singh and Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Harish Chandra Yadav.
SP leader Ram Govind Chaudhary is facing Congress' Puneet Pathak on Bansdih seat. Puneet's grandfather, Bachha Pathak is a former vice president of the state Congress. His grandfather had been an MLA from Bansdih for seven terms between 1967 and 1996 and was also a minister in the UP government.
SP leader Ram Govind Chaudhary also faces Nishad Party's Ketki Singh and BSP's Manti Rajbhar.
Polling for the seventh phase, which will be the last phase, will be held on March 7. The counting of votes will be done on March 10.
(With inputs from ANI and PTI)
