LUCKNOW: With a strong narrative built around the issues ranging from farmers, agriculture, caste, communal polarization and Covid, the stage is now set for phase II polling to 55 assembly constituencies spread across 9 districts in the western and Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh on Monday.
While campaign for second phase of 7-phased state assembly election ended on Saturday evening, the polling will start at 7 am in consonance with the ECI guidelines to ensure Covid-free polls. The voting will end at 6 pm.
As many as 586 candidates are in the fray in the second phase which has around 2 crore electorate in this phase. In 2017, the BJP had won 38 of 55 seats going to the polls in the second phase. Samajwadi Party had performed better in this phase as compared to the first phase in 2017. SP had got 15 of the 55 seats. While BSP had failed to open its account in the second phase in 2017, Congress had won two seats.
Of 55 seats going to polls on Monday, seven are reserved. Four of Yogi ministers including senior BJP leader and UP finance minister Suresh Khanna from Shahjahanpur, Gulabo Devi from Chanduasi in Sambhal, Baldev Singh Aulakh from Billaspur seat in Rampur, and Mahesh Chandra Gupta from Badaun Urban are testing the poll waters.
Another battle to be watched for would be in Rampur where SP stalwart and party MP Azam Khan’s fate will be at stake in the second phase. Azam Khan is lodged in Sitapur district jail since February 2020 in connection with series of criminal and civil cases. BJP has fielded Akash Saxena against Azam. Saxena has been behind lodging so many complaints of land grabbing and illegal acquisition of land for Jauhar University against Azam.
The districts, going to polls on Monday, have a respectable chunk of the Muslim population. Moradabad and Rampur have around 50 per cent of the Muslim population capable of having a definite sway over the seats going to polls in the second phase in both districts.
The districts going to polls in the second phase comprise of Saharanpur, Bijonre, Moradabad, Sambhal, Amroha, Bareilly, Badaun, Shajahanpur and Rampur. A number of turncoats including former Yogi minister Dharam Singh Saini, former AYUSH minister, is contesting from his traditional Nakur seat on SP ticket.
Saini had deserted the BJP along with Swami Prasad Maurya in mid-January and had joined the Samajwadi Party. Moreover, another prominent turncoat is Naresh Saini, the sitting Congress MLA from Behut in Saharanpur. Naresh Saini is in fray from Behut but as a BJP candidate this time. Tilhar in Shahjahanpur is another seat where BJP turncoat Roshan Lal Verma is pitched as the SP candidate this time.