With the end of the month-long campaigning on Saturday for the UP assembly elections, polling for the seventh phase will be held on Monday.
Fifty-four assembly constituencies in nine districts will vote on March 7 in the last phase of the polls.
The nine districts are Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Bhadohi, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra.
These constituencies going to poll on Monday include those falling in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi and Azamgarh from where Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is the Lok Sabha member.
UP Chief Electoral Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said here on Sunday that all necessary arrangements had been made for free, fair and transparent polling in the seventh phase.
He said the fate of 613 candidates trying their luck in this phase from the 54 constituencies, which included 11 reserved for the Scheduled Castes and two for Scheduled Tribes, would be decided by around 2.06 crore voters.
Shukla said that for the seventh phase of polling, 12,210 polling stations and 23,614 polling booths had been set up and the number of voters for each polling booth had been restricted to 1,250.
He said for ensuring free and fair election, the Election Commission of India had deployed 52 general observers, nine police observers, 17 expenditure observers, 1,621 sector magistrates, 195 zonal magistrates, 222 static magistrates and 2,796 micro observers.
He said from the day of commencement of the campaign for the seventh phase Rs 2.28 crore and 1.92 Lakh litres of alcohol had been seized.
The final round of election will also be a test of the alliances carved by both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Samajwadi Party with small caste-based parties. BJP's allies Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD Party and Akhilesh Yadav's new friends Apna Dal (K), Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party of Om Prakash Rajbhar and others have been trying to rally their supporters.
Once considered a stronghold of the SP, the region saw BJP making inroads in 2017 by winning 29 seats along with its allies Apna Dal (S) (4) and SBSP (3). The Bahujan Samaj Party won six seats and SP 11.
For the SP, its patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav made another rare appearance in Jaunpur to drum up support for Lucky Yadav, son of his long-time associate late Parasnath Yadav, in the fray from Malhani seat. Mulayam Singh Yadav had earlier campaigned for his son and SP president Akhilesh Yadav contesting from Karhal seat in Mainpuri.
Prominent contestants in this phase of elections include UP ministers Neelkanth Tiwari, Anil Rajbhar, Ravindra Jaiswal, Girish Yadav and Rama Shankar Singh Patel.
Dara Singh Chauhan, who had resigned from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and joined the SP, is also contesting from Ghosi in Mau.
SBSP president Om Prakash Rajbhar (Zahoorabad), Dhananjay Singh (Malhani-Jaunpur) as Janata Dal (United) candidate Abbas Ansari, son of mafia-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, from Mau Sadar seat are other prominent candidates in the final phase.
The BJP is going all out to retain its bastion while the SP is eyeing to regain the constituencies it had won in the 2012 assembly elections.
In this phase of the election, the BJP has fielded 48 candidates out of 54 seats on the party symbol while its ally Apna Dal (S) and NISHAD Party have fielded three candidates each.
On the other hand, the SP has fielded 45 candidates on its symbol while its ally SBSP has fielded seven candidates and Apna Dal (K) two.