The Election Commission of India has made elaborate arrangements for the fifth phase of UP assembly polls on Sunday.
More than two crore people will vote for 692 candidates in the poll fray in the fifth phase polling on February 27 in 61 assembly constituencies spread across 12 districts.
UP’s Chief Election Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said in Lucknow on Saturday that polling would take place from 7 am to 6 pm. He said that 693 candidates were in the fray from 61 assembly seats in the fifth phase, which included 90 women candidates.
The election commission has set up 14,030 polling stations and 25,995 polling booths for the fifth phase of elections. It has made arrangements for the live webcasting at 50 per cent polling booths.
The Ayodhya constituency too goes to polls on February 27, along with 60 other seats spread across 11 districts in this round.
In 2017, the BJP had won 48 of these seats. In the previous 2012 polls, 42 of them were bagged by Samajwadi Party. Since 2017, with Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister, Ayodhya has also seen geographical expansion, with the district formerly known as Faizabad being renamed.
The other districts that go to polls on Sunday are Amethi, Rae Bareli, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Kaushambi, Prayagraj, Barabanki, Bahraich, Shravasti, Gonda and Chitrakoot in Bundelkhand.
In the erstwhile Faizabad, now Ayodhya, the Bharatiya Janata Party had won all five assembly seats of Rudauli, Milkipur (SC), Bikapur, Gosaiganj and Ayodhya in 2017. Five years down the line as UP votes again, fast-paced development and the ongoing construction of Ram temple are the new identity of this town. The BJP is hoping that the unprecedented attention given to Ayodhya during its five-year term will also help pull votes, as the ‘new Ayodhya’ also gets in sync with Hindutva expression.
Though fervour around Ram temple-associated Hindutva has been much lowered with the BJP’s decision not to field Yogi Adityanath from Ayodhya, the party will still hope that the construction of Ram temple will be the glue needed for the voters not just in the district but the nearby region as well, especially in the Devipatan belt comprising 16 constituencies across spread three districts of Gonda, Bahraich and Shravasti. In 2017, the BJP had won 14 of them, one each having gone to Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.
Heavyweight candidates in the fifth phase include Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya from Sirathu constituency in Kaushambi, Jansatta Dal candidate Raghuraj Pratap Singh from Kunda in Pratapgarh, BJP’s Sanjay Singh from Amethi and Congress’ Aradhana Mishra from Rampur Khas constituency of Pratapgarh. Four other UP ministers are contesting elections in the fifth phase. They are Sidharth Nath Singh and Nand Gopal Gupta ‘Nandi’ (Prayagraj), and Ramapati Shastri and Rajendra Singh.
After analysing affidavits for 685 leaders, the Association for Democratic Reforms revealed that more than 200 candidates in the fray have assets worth over Rs 1 crore. Among the major parties, Bharatiya Janata Party has 47 crorepati candidates, Samajwadi Party has 49, Bahujan Samaj Party 44 and Congress 30.
The first four phases of assembly elections took place on February 10, 14, 20 and 23. While the fifth phase is scheduled on Sunday, the last two phases will be held on March 3 and 7.
