With the stage set for the sixth phase poll to 14 Lok Sabha constituencies of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, the spotlight will be on Azamgarh and Sultanpur where former chief minister and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and Union minister Maneka Gandhi are in the fray.
The other prominent candidates in the sixth phase poll are UP cabinet minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi (Allahabad) Bhojpuri actor Dinesh Lal Yadav alias Nirahua of BJP who is pitted against Akhilesh Yadav in Azamgarh, and Congress’ old warhorse Sanjay Singh who is contesting against Maneka Gandhi in Sultanpur.
Over 1.5 lakh security personnel have been deployed to conduct free and fair polls in Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Phulpur, Allahabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Shrawasti, Dumariyaganj, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Lalganj, Jaunpur, Machhlishahr, Bhadohi and Azamgarh constituencies in the Purvanchal region of the state.
UP’s Chief Electoral Officer L Vekanteshwarlu said here on Saturday that polling parties were being dispatched to their respective booths from Saturday morning.
He said in view of the ongoing heat wave conditions, the district authorities had been directed to ensure drinking water, shed and other basic facilities for the polling parties and the voters in the districts going to polls.
He said the state government had deployed over 200 companies of central forces besides PAC and district police to provide security to all the polling booths. To instill confidence among the voters, the paramilitary forces conducted flag marches in vulnerable areas.
The Election Commission has made special security arrangements in Pratapgarh, Sultanpur and Bhadohi in view of its previous history of violence during the polls.
There are 174 candidates in the fray in this phase and their fate would be decided by 2.53 voters — 1.36 crore males and 1.17 crore females – in 29,076 booths. Among the electorate, 3,63,220 are first time voters in the age group of 18-19 years while 5,63,671 voters are above the age of 80 years.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party had won 13 of these 14 seats except Azamgarh from where Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav was elected, defeating BJP’s Ramakant Yadav. However, in the bypoll to Phulpur parliamentary seat in March 2018 , the BJP was defeated by the SP candidate. The Phulpur seat was won for the first time by the BJP in 2014, when Keshav Prasad Maurya emerged victorious from the seat once represented by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. Maurya had to vacate the seat after he became the Deputy Chief Minister of UP in 2017 and was elected to UP Legislative Council
In Azamgarh, Akhilesh Yadav is trying to retain the seat won by his father against Bhojpuri film star Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ of the BJP. The constituency has a substantial population of Yadavs, Jatavs and Muslims — the three communities which form the crux of the SP-BSP alliance in the politically crucial state. Since 1996, only Muslims and Yadavs have won the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat. Azamgarh has over 17 lakh voters. Estimates say that about four lakh of them are Yadavs, three lakh Muslims and around 2.75 lakh Dalits.
Sultanpur too is seeing an interesting contest between Maneka Gandhi, Sanjay Singh of the Congress and Chandra Bhadra Singh of the BSP. The seats appears tricky for Maneka Gandhi as BJP strategists are relying on a division of Congress and SP-BSP alliance votes, besides possible counter-polarisation of non-Yadav and non-Jatav Dalit and OBC votes.
Jaunpur has the highest number (20) of candidates followed by 15 each in Sultanpur, Lalganj, Azamgarh and Machhlishahr, 14 each in Phulpur and Allahabad, 12 in Bhadohi, 11 each in Ambedkar Nagar and Basti, 10 in Shraswati, 8 in Pratapgarh and the lowest 7 each in Sant Kabir Nagar and Dumariyaganj.