Campaign ends for second phase of UP polls
Campaigning for the second phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls ended on Thursday with top leaders of the major stake holders putting in their best efforts to woo the electorate.
The fate of 1,099 candidates will be decided through the polling scheduled to be held on Saturday for the 59 assembly seats spread across nine districts in the eastern region of the state. The districts where polling will be held include-- Azamgarh, Sant Kabir Nagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Deoria, Kushinagar, Mau, Ghazipur and Ballia.
The total number of electorate this time is around 1.93 crore.
Prominent among those, whose fate will be sealed in Saturday’s polling include state BJP chief Surya Pratap Shahi, former UP BJP president Ramapati Ram Tripathi, UP assembly speaker Sukhdeo Rajbhar and mafia don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari.
Shahi is contesting from Pathardewan in Deoria, while Tripathi is in the fray from Siswan in Maharajganj district. Rajbhar has shifted to Didarganj seat in Azamgarh this time, while Ansari is trying his luck from two seats-Mau and Ghosi.
Of the 59 assembly seats, as many as 19 are new ones created after delimitation while, 22 old seats had ceased to exist following the exercise. Many seats, where polling will be held, are close to the Indo-Nepal border and are believed to be sensitive. Keeping this in view, the border had been sealed and patrolling had been intensified to prevent any infiltration from across the border, official sources here said.
Many candidates contesting in the second phase have a criminal background. If sources are to be believed, about 35 per cent nominees contesting in the second phase had criminal antecedents.
In the 2007 assembly polls, BSP had bagged the maximum number of seats from this region. It had won from 30 seats followed by the Samajwadi Party, which had emerged victorious on 21 seats. The BJP had bagged seven seats, while the Congress could secure only two seats. One seat was bagged by an independent candidate.
