Polling begins for 14 seats in UP

Voting for the fifth phase of Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh covering 14 Lok Sabha constituencies, which will decide the fate of five Union ministers, including Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani, and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, began on Monday morning.

Voting will also take place for the assembly bypoll to Lucknow East assembly constituency.

The Election Commission said voting will be held from 7 am to 6 pm.

The seats going to polls in the fifth phase are Lucknow, Mohanlalganj (SC), Rae Bareli, Amethi, Jalaun (SC), Jhansi, Hamirpur, Banda, Fatehpur, Kaushambi (SC), Barabanki (SC), Faizabad, Kaisarganj and Gonda.

Besides Defence Minister Singh (Lucknow) and Minister for Women and Child Development Irani (Amethi), those in the fray are Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor (Mohanlalganj), Minister of State for Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur) and Union Minister of State for MSME Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma (Jalaun).

Rahul Gandhi is in the fray from Rae Bareli, which was represented by his mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi earlier.

Over 2.71 crore voters are eligible to exercise their voting rights on Monday and 144 candidates are in the fray.

The BJP gave tickets to 11 of its sitting Lok Sabha MPs in this phase, while it has fielded new candidates in Barabanki (SC) seat and Kaisarganj.

For the INDIA bloc, the Congress has fielded K L Sharma from Amethi, Tanuj Punia from Barabanki (SC) and Pradeep Jain 'Aditya' from Jhansi. Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates are in the poll fray on the rest of the seats.

Defence Minister Singh is eyeing a fourth term from Lucknow. He is pitted against sitting SP MLA Ravidas Mehrotra from Lucknow Central.

Union minister Irani has been fielded from the neighbouring Amethi constituency.

In Kaisarganj Lok Sabha seat, the contest is between BJP's Karan Bhushan Singh, son of former MP and ex-president of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, and SP's Bhagat Ram.

Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, which covers the temple town of Ayodhya, will see a contest between sitting BJP MP Lallu Singh, who is seeking a hat-trick, and Awadhesh Prasad, the SP MLA from Milkipur (SC) assembly constituency in Ayodhya district.

In Hamirpur, the poll contest is between BJP's Kunwar Pushpendra Singh Chandel, eyeing a third term, and SP's Ajendra Singh Lodhi.

In Gonda, BJP's Kirti Vardhan Singh, who is eyeing a fifth term, is up against SP's Shreya Verma.

The electoral contest 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 wins, will be facing SP's Pushpendra Saroj, son of SP leader Indrajeet Saroj, for Kaushambi (SC) constituency.

Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma is eyeing a sixth term and is pitted against Narayan Das Ahirwar of the SP in Jalaun.

Voting will also take place for the assembly bypoll to Lucknow East assembly constituency. A bypoll in the constituency was necessitated following the death of sitting MLA Ashutosh Tandon on November 9, 2023.