Stage set for first phase UP poll, election campaign ends

Lucknow: The election campaign on 73 assembly seats spread over 15 districts of Western Uttar Pradesh came to an end at 17.00 hours on Thursday as the first of seven phases of state assembly polls will take place on February 11.

A total of 839 candidates are in the fray on these seats of Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, baghpat, Meerut, Ghaziabad,Gautam Buddha Nagar, Hapur, Bulandshahr, Aligarhmathura, Hathras, Agra, Firozabad, Etah and Kasganj district in the first phase of UP Assembly polls 2017. The highest number of candidates are in contest on Agra south seat (26) while the lowest of six each on Hastinapur , Loni and Iglas seats.

The prominent candidates who are trying their luck at the hustings included former UP BJP Chief Laxmikant Bajpayee from Meerut Sadar, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s son Pankaj, who is making debut in electoral politics from Noida seat, Congress legislature party leader Pradeep Mathur and BJP national spokesman Shrikant Sharma from Mathura, vocal BJP leader Sangeet Som from Sardhana, former UP Minister Ramveer Updhyaya from Sadabad.

Of these 73 seats, the ruling party in UP Samajwadi Party has 24 seats followed by BSP (23) ,BJP (12) , RLD (9) and Congress (5). The biggest stake in this phase is of SP and Congress who are contesting the polls in alliance.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had two meetings in this phase, one each in Meerut and Ghaziabad,while for BJP Yogi Adityanath, Rajnath Singh, Sanjiv Balian, Hema Malini and National President Amit Shah were the main campaigners, for SP-Congress alliance, Rahul Gandhi and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had two joint meetings and road shows in Agra and Meerut beside number of meetings by Raj Babbar, for Rashtriya Lok Dal , Ajit Singh, Jayant Chaudhary and his wife Charu were the main campaigners.