56 Uttar Pradesh assembly seats to go to polls Wednesday

Fifty-six seats spread across 10 districts will Wednesday go to polls in the third leg of the seven-phased Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

The most high-profile of these districts is Amethi (re-christened Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Nagar), the parliamentary seat of Congress general secretary and star campaigner Rahul Gandhi. Another Gandhi family bastion Sultanpur as well as the traditional Nehru-Gandhi home Allahabad are also in the list of places to go to polls. 

Among the other districts are Varanasi, Jaunpur, Mirzapur, Bhadohi (renamed Sant Ravidas Nagar), Kaushambhi, Sonbhadra and Chandauli - mostly situated along the banks of the Ganga river.

The fate of 1,018 candidates for the 56 seats will be determined by 1.77 crore voters  at 18,374 polling stations where 31,400 electronic voting machines are in place. Prominent candidates include former state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president and former state assembly speaker Keshri Nath Tripathi, Mayawati cabinet ministers Indrajeet Saroj and Nand Gopal Nandi, and former Samajwadi Party minister Ujjwal Singh.

Said Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer Umesh Singh: "The 18,374 polling parties detailed to man the polling stations have reached their respective destinations."