LS polls: Rae Bareli and Amethi among 14 UP seats that will vote in phase 5 on Monday
File image: A voter gets his finger marked with indelible ink before voting by post for the Lok Sabha elections. (Photo: PTI)
Voting will take place on Monday for the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, which will decide the fate of four Union ministers, including Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani, and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Voting will also be held for the Assembly elections in Lucknow East constituency.
The seats going to polls in the fifth phase are Mohanlalganj (SC), Rae Bareli, Amethi, Jalaun (SC), Jhansi, Hamirpur, Banda, Fatehpur, Kaushambi (SC), Barabanki (SC), Faizabad, Kaisarganj and Gonda .
Besides Defense Minister Singh (Lucknow), Women and Child Development Minister Irani (Amethi), those involved in the fray include Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj) and Minister of State for Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur ). .
Rahul Gandhi is in the fray with Rae Bareli, who was earlier represented by his mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Over 2.68 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise and 144 candidates are in the fray.
The BJP gave tickets to 11 of its sitting Lok Sabha MPs in this phase, while fielding new candidates for Barabanki (SC) and Kaisarganj seats.
In the INDIA block, Congress has fielded KL Sharma from Amethi, Tanuj Punia from Barabanki (SC) and Pradeep Jain ‘Aditya’ from Jhansi. The Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates are in the poll battle for the rest of the seats.
Defense Minister Singh is looking forward to a fourth term from Lucknow. He is pitted against sitting SP MLA Ravidas Mehrotra from Lucknow Central.
Irani is contesting the poll from neighboring Amethi constituency.
The Kaisarganj Lok Sabha seat is contested between BJP’s Karan Bhushan Singh, son of former MP and ex-president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, and SP’s Bhagat Ram.
The Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, which covers the temple town of Ayodhya, will see a contest between sitting BJP MP Lallu Singh, who is looking for a hat-trick, and Awadhesh Prasad, the SP MLA from Milkipur (SC) constituency in Ayodhya district.
In Hamirpur, the election battle is between Kunwar Pushpendra Singh Chandel of the BJP, who is seeking a third term, and Ajendra Singh Lodhi of the SP.
In Gonda, BJP’s Kirti Vardhan Singh, who is seeking a fifth term, faces a contest from SP’s Shreya Verma.
The main election battle in Banda is between RK Singh Patel, who is seeking a third term, and Krishna Devi Shivshankar Patel of the SP.
Vinod Kumar Sonkar, who is eyeing a hat-trick of Lok Sabha victories, will take on SP’s Pushpendra Saroj, son of SP leader Indrajeet Saroj, for the Kaushambi (SC) constituency.
Voting will also be held for the Assembly elections in Lucknow East constituency.
Bypoll in Lucknow East constituency was necessitated following the death of sitting MLA Ashutosh Tandon on November 9, 2023.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: May 19, 2024 | 10:21 am IST