Lucknow : The destiny of numerous high-profile candidates, including former Union Minister Maneka Gandhi, will be decided on Saturday when 14 Uttar Pradesh seats go to vote in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections. On Saturday, there will also be a bypoll for the Gaisari assembly seat in Balrampur.
According to Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa, 162 candidates are running for Lok Sabha, comprising 146 males and 16 women, with seven candidates running in Gaisari.
Campaigning for the sixth phase of the elections concluded on Thursday at 6 p.m. On Saturday, voting will begin at 7 a.m. and will stop at 6 p.m.
The Lok Sabha seats up for election are: Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Phulpur, Allahabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Shrawasti, Domariyaganj, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Lalganj, Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Machhlishahr, and Bhadohi. Gandhi, the BJP candidate in Sultanpur, is seeking her ninth Lok Sabha seat. Former Union minister is competing against Samajwadi Party’s Ram Bhual Nishad and Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Uday Raj Verma.
Former West Bengal governor Kesari Nath Tripathi’s son Neeraj Tripathi of the BJP will face Congress candidate Ujjawal Raman Singh in Allahabad. In Azamgarh, incumbent BJP MP Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua will face Samajwadi Party candidate Dharmendra Yadav.
Yadav lost to Nirahua in the 2022 by-election. Akhilesh Yadav, the Samajwadi Party president, won the seat in the 2019 elections.
In Jaunpur, former Maharashtra minister Kripashankar Singh of the BJP will face Samajwadi Party candidate Babu Singh Khushwaha and BSP incumbent MP Shyam Singh Yadav.
Lalitesh Pati Tripathi of the Trinamool Congress is running in Bhadohi, while Ritesh Pandey of the BJP is up against former minister Lalji Verma of the Samajwadi Party in Ambedkar Nagar. The electoral campaign in Sant Kabir Nagar puts BJP incumbent Praveen Nishad against Samajwadi Party candidate Laxmikant alias Pappu Nishad.
Uttar Pradesh has the most MPs in the Lok Sabha, with 80. The first five waves of voting included votes for 53 seats. The remaining 13 seats will be decided in the seventh phase on June 1.
