53 seats to go for polls in UP on Thursday

LUCKNOW: Fifty-three constituencies will see polling on Thursday in the fourth phase of staggered assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. A total of 1.84 crore people will be eligible to vote in the election, whose main players are the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). In 2012, the Samajwadi Party won 24 of the 53 seats, the BSP 15, the Congress 6, the BJP five while three seats were bagged by the Peace Party. There are 680 candidates in the fourth phase, including 61 women. Prominent personalities include Utkarsha Mishra, son of former opposition leader in the outgoing assembly Swamy Prasad Maurya, independent Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya, Aradhna Mishra, daughter of Raja Sabha member Pramod Tiwari, and Ujjwal Raman Singh, son of Samajwadi Party leader Reoti Raman Singh. Around 1 crore of the voters on Thursday are males and 84 lakh women. The third gender includes 1,034 voters. The constituency with most candidates is Allahabad North (26) and the constituencies with the least number of nominees are Khaga and Kunda (six each). In 17 constituencies, more than one woman is contesting, an Election Commission official told IANS. Lalitpur has the largest electorate (453,162) and Ayahshah the least (260,439). There are 19,487 polling stations in this phase.