Campaigning for the by-elections to 11 seats of Uttar Pradesh assembly came to an end on Saturday evening.
Polling in these constituencies will be held on October 21. The counting of votes will be taken up on October 24.
The Election Commission has deployed Central forces in all the 11 constituencies and they have reached their respective areas and were holding flag marches to instil confidence among the voters.
There are 110 candidates in the fray for the 11 seats.
While the Bharatiya Janata Party wound up its campaign with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath addressing election meetings in western UP at Rampur, Gangoh in Saharanpur and Iglas in Aligarh district on Friday, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, who had skipped the campaigning, addressed a rally in Rampur on Saturday.
All the prominent political parties — BJP, SP, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress — have claimed their stake on all the 11 seats which are witnessing a four-cornered contest, giving an edge to the ruling BJP.
Though the BJP candidates are sitting comfortably in most of the constituencies to the bypolls, Ghosi, Rampur and Jalalpur may witness a tough contest.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath campaigned in all the poll-bound constituencies. Although the BJP had won eight of the 11 seats in the previous poll, a look at the poll percentage reveals that registering big win will not be easy for the party this time,.
Of the 11 assembly constituencies going to bypolls, except for Rampur and Jalalpur, all were won by the BJP in 2017 state assembly elections.
The first challenge for the BJP is likely to come from the Ghosi assembly seat in the Mau district where the party had won by a very thin margin in the 2017 assembly polls. Its candidate Phagu Chauhan had won by a margin of just 7,000 votes. Bahujan Samaj Party candidate who came second had polled 34 per cent votes.
The seat was vacated by Chauhan after he was appointed Governor of Bihar.
The Jalalpur Assembly seat in Ambedkarnagar, is considered a BSP stronghold and has a sizeable amount of Dalits, Muslims and Brahmins. It also poses a challenge to the ruling party. The seat was vacated by BSP’s Ritesh Pandey after he was elected to Lok Sabha.
Another seat that may prove difficult to win is Rampur, where the electorate has been voting for Samajwadi Party leader Mohammad Azam Khan since 1980, barring 1996 when he lost to a Congress candidate.
Considered a traditional stronghold of the Samajwadi Party,, the seat will witness a four-cornered contest in which the Muslim votes are expected to be divided between the SP, BSP and Congress.
In a bid to retain the seat, the SP has fielded Tazeen Fatma, wife of the Rampur MP Azam Khan. The BJP has fielded Bharat Bhushan Gupta from this seat.
The other seats going to bypolls are Zaidpur in Barabanki where Tanuj Punia, son of former MP and veteran Congress leader PL Punia, is contesting on Congress ticket.
In Lucknow Cantonment, Pratapgarh, Iglas, Govindnagar, Manikpur and Balha, the BJP has an edge as there would be a four-cornered contest.