Campaign ends for May 25 polls in 14 Lok Sabha seats, Gaisari assembly bypoll in UP

Lucknow : Campaigning for the sixth phase of Lok Sabha polls in UP in 14 Lok Sabha constituencies, including the high profile Sultanpur and Azamgarh seats, where voting is to take place on May 25 ended on Thursday.

Campaigning also ended for Gaisari assembly seat in Balrampur, where byelections are to be held on May 25. According to Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa, a total 162 candidates including 146 men and 16 women are in fray while seven candidates are contesting in the Gaisari assembly seat.

The campaign ended at 6 pm. The voting on these seats will be held between 7 am and 6 pm on May 25.

After the end of campaign, all outside district workers of the political parties will not be allowed in the respective districts where polling is to be held, he said. The seats which are going to polls include Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Phulpur, Allahabad, Ambedkarnagar, Shrawasti, Domariaganj, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Lalganj (SC), Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Machlishahar (SC) and Bhadohi.

In Sultanpur, BJP candidate Maneka Gandhi is locked in a keen contest with SP’s Bhim Nishad and BSP’s Udayraj Verma. From Allahabad, former governor Kesari Nath Tripathi’s son Neeraj Tripathi will be facing Ujjawal Raman Singh of Congress.

In Azamgarh seat, which was won by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav in 2019, sitting BJP MP Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua will be facing SP’s Dharmendra Yadav, who lost to Nirahua in the 2022 Lok Sabha bypoll. Another keenly watched seat Jaunpur will see former Maharashtra minister Kripashankar Singh fight against SP candidate Babu Singh Khushwaha and BSP’s sitting MP Shyam Singh Yadav.

In Bhadohi, Lalitesh Pati Tripathi of the Trinamool Congress is in the fray. For this phase, Prime Minister Narendra Modi started a campaign from Allahabad in which he said the opposition Congress and the SP compete with each other in the appeasement of their vote bank and called both parties “anti-development”.

“The SP and the Congress are more concerned about their vote bank than Kumbh (mela),” he said in Allahabad. BSP chief Mayawati also campaigned for her party candidates and termed the Congress and the BJP anti-Dalit and anti-backward, stating that that their intentions and thinking are against reservation.

“When the first Congress government was formed at the Centre, B R Ambedkar, who was the law minister, told ‘Jawahar Lal Nehru and company’ that the SCs and STs were not getting the full benefits of reservation given in the Constitution in the government jobs,” she alleged.

Akhilesh Yadav, during his campaign, claimed that the INDIA bloc is getting huge support in UP and predicted that the BJP will lose all the 80 Lok Sabha seats including Varanasi in the state.

Addressing a rally in support of SP’s Lalganj candidate Daroga Prasad Saroj, Yadav said, “This time, whatever strategy they (BJP) have made, the people of Uttar Pradesh have made up their mind to wipe them out.” He reiterated his allegation that the BJP wanted to change the Constitution. In his rallies, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attacked the INDIA bloc claiming that it wants to loot the country by dividing the people on the lines of caste and religion.