The campaigning for the February 23 fourth phase of UP assembly elections ended on Tuesday evening with BJP and the SP Congress alliance going for grand road shows in the Allahabad to mobilise support. In this phase of election 53 Assembly seats spread across 12 districts covering Bundelkhand and neighbouring Allahabad and Fatehpur. Around 1.84 crore voters are expected to exercise their franchise at 19,487 polling booths on Thursday.
In third phase of election the stakes are high for the ruling Samajwadi party. The fourth phase of elections is a different story for the Congress’s alliance with the Samajwadi party. The prestige of the Congress and also its alliance with the Samajwadi Party is at stake in this phase of elections. The districts crucial for the Congress are Allahabad, Raibareli and Pratapgarh. The alliance has the challenge to retain its dominant status in the region where the BSP is a strong player and BJP has emerged as a formidable contender on almost every seat going to polls in the fourth phase of the election.
The entry and exit in the 12 districts going to the polls is regulated by the police on the highways passing through these districts. The central forces have reached the headquarters of the 12 districts. All the liquor shops have been closed till the end of the polling on Thursday evening.
The fourth phase of elections would be the political test of three women and a male politician. Congress president Sonia Gandhi , MP from Raibareli , Union ministers Uma Bharati MP from Jhansi and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti MP from Fatehpur besides state BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya MP from Phoolpur in kaushambi district.
This phase will see the crucial contest in Rae Bareli, Allahabad, Fatehpur and Bundelkhand region. Sonia, ever since she made a debut in politics nearly two decades ago skipped the campaign for the first time due to health reasons.
A total of 680 candidates in the fray for the 53 seats in the fourth phase of elections with 60 women, and among the candidates 17 per cent have admitted criminals cases against them and 28 per cent are crorepatis.
In this phase while BSP is contesting in all the 53 seats, BJP have given candidates in 48 seats and left rest five for its alliance partner Apna Dal. The SP had given candidates in 34 seats and Congress is contesting 21 seats as on two seats - Unchachar and Sareni, both the parties have fielded their candidates. The prominent candidates in the fray in this fourth phase elections are Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya Independent from Kunda, Congress leader Pramod Tiwari’s daughter Aradhana Mishra from Rampur Khas, BSP legislature party leader Gaya Charan Dinker from Naraini seat in Banda, cabinet minister Manoj Pandey from Uchahar seat in Rae Bareli, Congress candidate Aditi Singh, daughter of mafia don Akhilesh Singh, from Rae Bareli ( Sadar) seat and BJP national spokesperson Sidharthnath Singh from Allahabad( west). In the fourth phase Assembly seats, the break up of the seats won by different parties was — SP- 24, BSP- 15, BJP- 5, Congress -6 and others -3. In that elections SP got 26.9 per cent of votes,BSP got 26 per cent, BJP got 13.9 per cent, Congress 15.4 per cent and others 18.3 per cent. During the 2014 lok Sabha polls, BJP led in 37 assembly segments with getting 38 per cent of votes, while BSP was ahead in 4 assembly segments with 19.9 per cent votes, SP had lead in 5 assembly segments with 18.3 per cent of votes and Congress in six assembly segments with 12.5 per cent of votes. The 12 districts going to polls are Pratapgarh, Kaushambi, Allahabad, Jalaon, Jhansi, lalitpur, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Banda, Fatehpur, Rae Bareli and Chitrakoot.