Uttar Pradesh assembly elections: UP musters for 3rd phase of polling on Sunday

Lucknow: The third phase of Uttar Pradesh crucial assembly polls will be held for 69 seats across 12 districts on Sunday. The polling would take place in 29 constituencies. Voter share: A total of 2.41 crore voters will decide the fate of 826 candidates. There are 1.31 crore men, 1.10 crore women and 1,026 voters from the third gender who will exercise their franchise on February 19, a poll official said. There are 16,671 polling centres and 25,603 polling stations in this phase. Districts that would go to poll: The 12 districts where polling is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. are Farrukhabad, Mainpuri, Etawah, Hardoi, Kannauj, Kanpur rural, Kanpur city, Unnao, Lucknow, Barabanki, Auraiyya and Sitapur. Phase 3 strong heads: Prominent personalities whose fate would be decided in this phase include Ministers Arvind Singh 'Gop', Fareed Mehfooz Kidwai, Vijay Bahadur Pal, Abhishek Mishra, Nitin Agarwal, Narendra Verma, Rajeev Kumar Singh and former Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav. Division of candidates: The maximum number of candidates in fray are from Etawah (21) - the home town of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, while the least number is in Haidergarh (3) assembly constituency of Barabanki, neighbouring the state capital here. Lucknow Central and Lucknow West have 17 candidates each, while Farrukhabad and Bhojpur have 20 each. The third phase comes as the biggest litmus test for the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) as it held 55 of these 69 seats in the 2012 assembly polls. Of the remaining seats, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) held six, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) five and Congress two in the last election. One seat was won by an independent.