The sixth phase of Uttar Pradesh assembly election will witness direct fight between the alliances led by Bharatiya Janata Party and Samajwadi Party in 57 constituencies which will go to polls on Thursday.
The Bahujan Samaj Party is also making the contest triangular in several constituencies.
UP Chief Electoral Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said in Lucknow on Wednesday that there were 676 candidates in the fray in the 57 assembly constituencies spread over 10 districts -- Gorakhpur, Ambedkarnagar, Ballia, Balrampur, Basti, Deoria, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Sant Kabir Nagar and Siddharthnagar.
In the 2017 polls, the BJP alliance had won 47 of these assembly seats.
The chief electoral officer said that 2.15 crore voters were eligible to vote in the sixth phase which included 1.15 crore males, one crore females and 1,363 transgenders. A total of 676 candidates were in the fray, including 66 women, he added.
This phase has assumed significance as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is in the poll fray from Gorakhpur Urban seat. The key contestants in the sixth phase are Yogi Adityanath from Gorakhpur who is pitted against SP candidate Subhawati Shukla and Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad.
On January 15, BJP's Central Election Committee had approved Yogi Adityanath's candidature from Gorakhpur Urban, a seat which the party has not lost since 1989. This marked a significant moment in state politics as every chief minister since 2012, whether it was Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati or Yogi, opted to get elected to the legislative council instead of contesting assembly polls. As Yogi represented the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat from 1998 to 2017, he is expected to secure a comfortable win.
Fazil Nagar in Kushinagar district is another seat to watch out for in the sixth phase. This seat will witness high-stakes battle between the BJP and SP as Swami Prasad Maurya resigned from the Yogi government in January and joined the SP. He had joined BJP ahead of 2017 assembly poll in the presence of Amit Shah on August 8, 2016 after serving in the BSP for two decades.
After Maurya's exit from the BJP, several BJP MLAs including Vinay Shakya, Roshan Lal Verma, Brijesh Prajapati, Bhagwati Sagar, Avtar Singh Bhadana, Dara Singh Chauhan and Mukesh Verma also switched sides and joined the Samajwadi Party.
In 2017, Maurya had contested as BJP candidate from Padrauna and apprehending anti-incumbency, he shifted to Fazilnagar this time. He will take on BJP's Surendra Kushwaha, the son of incumbent legislator Ganga Singh Kushwaha, who won from here since 2012.
Former BSP stalwart Lalji Verma too switched sides and is now contesting as SP candidate from Katheri in Ambedkarnagar district. He was finance and parliamentary affairs minister when Mayawati was the chief minister. Verma was also BSP's founding member and was serving as its legislature party leader. He was sacked from BSP in June 2021 for alleged anti-party activities during the panchayat poll and joined the SP in November. Verma faces a tough challenge from BSP's Prateek Pandey. The BJP has reposed faith in Awadhesh Kumar while Congress has fielded Nishat Fatima.
Veteran socialist and leader of opposition in UP assembly, Ram Govind Chaudhary is seeking re-election from Bansdih assembly seat in Ballia. He is an eight-time MLA, having won his first election in 1977. He represented the Chilkahar seat five times before switching to Bansdih. He was the minister for basic education in the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government from 2012 to 2017. The BJP has pitted Ketakee Singh against him who lost to Chaudhary by a narrow margin of 1,687 votes in the 2017 state election.
Chillupar in Gorakhpur district is also being perceived as a battle of turncoats, Chillupar will see a faceoff between SP's Vinay Shankar Tiwari and Rajesh Tripathi of the BJP. Tripathi had won the 2012 assembly polls as a BSP candidate. Vinay Shankar is the son of don-turned-politico and influential leader in Gorakhpur region, Hari Shankar Tewari. Vinay was expelled from the BSP along with his elder brother Kushal Tiwari and relative Ganesh Shankar Pandey in December last year.