Third Phase: Voting Begins For 59 Assembly Seats Across 16 Districts In UP

Lucknow, Feb 20 (PTI) Voting for 59 Assembly constituencies spread across 16 districts of Uttar Pradesh began on Sunday morning.

Polling started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm.

This is the third phase of the Assembly polls in the state, where elections are to be held in seven rounds.

As many as 627 candidates are in the fray in this phase, in which over 2.15 crore people are eligible to vote.

The districts where polling is being held are Hathras, Firozabad, Etah, Kasganj, Mainpuri, Farrukhabad, Kannauj, Etawah, Auraiya, Kanpur Dehat, Kanpur Nagar, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Hamirpur and Mahoba.

The Karhal Assembly seat, from where Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is contesting, is also going to polls in this phase.

The BJP has fielded Union minister S P Singh Baghel from the seat.

Sunday's polling will also seal the fate of the Samajwadi Party chief's uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav, who is contesting from his traditional Jaswantnagar seat.

Before the campaigning ended for the third phase on Friday, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra undertook a door-to-door march in Kanpur, Kalpi, Jalaun and Hamirpur while BSP chief Mayawati addressed election meetings in Jalaun and Auraiya.

Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav sought votes for his son Akhilesh Yadav in Karhal.

The BJP had approached the Election Commission seeking deployment of paramilitary forces at all booths in Karhal.

Among other prominent faces in the fray in this phase are BJP's Satish Mahana (Maharajpur in Kanpur) and Ramvir Upadhaya (Sadabad in Hathras), and Louise Khurshid, who is contesting on the Congress ticket from Farrukhabad Sadar.

Louise Khurshid is the wife of senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid. Former IPS officer Asim Arun is contesting from Kannauj Sadar on the BJP ticket while Uttar Pradesh minister Ramnaresh Agnihotri is also in the fray in this phase.

In the 2017 Assembly elections, the BJP had won 49 of the 59 seats while the SP had settled for nine. The Congress had got one seat while the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) drew a blank.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)