With 676 candidates in the fray in the sixth phase of Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath tops the chart of the prominent faces of this phase.
The incumbent Chief Minister is fighting the polls on a BJP ticket from Gorakhpur. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has pitted Khwaja Shamsuddin while Samajwadi Party (SP) has fielded Subhavati Shukla, who is the wife of late Upendra Dutt Shukla, a former BJP leader, against Adityanath. Meanwhile, Congress' Chetna Pandey will also fight against Adityanath.
The 10 districts going to the polls in the sixth phase are Ambedkar Nagar, Balrampur, Siddharthnagar, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria and Ballia. Polling in these constituencies will be held from 7 am till 6 pm on March 3.
Besides Adityanath, prominent faces in this phase are state Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu, who is contesting from Tamkuhi Raj seat, Swami Prasad Maurya, who quit as minister to join the Samajwadi Party and is contesting from Fazilnagar seat, and Leader of Opposition in the state assembly and senior Samajwadi Party leader Ram Govind Chaudhary, who is contesting from Bansdih seat.
Congress' Ajay Kumar Lallu is facing BSP's Sanjay Gupta and SP's Udaynarayan Gupta on Tamkuhi Raj seat.
SP's Swami Prasad Maurya will contest from Fazilnagar seat against BJP candidate Surendra Singh Kushwaha, the son of incumbent BJP MLA Ganga Singh Kushwaha. Maurya will face BSP's Ilyas Ansari, Congress' Sunil Singh and Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Harish Chandra Yadav.
SP leader Ram Govind Chaudhary is facing Congress' Puneet Pathak on Bansdih seat. Puneet's grandfather, Bachha Pathak is a former vice president of the state Congress. His grandfather had been an MLA from Bansdih for seven terms between 1967 and 1996 and was also a minister in the UP government.
SP leader Ram Govind Chaudhary also faces Nishad Party's Ketki Singh and BSP's Manti Rajbhar.
A total of 2,14,62,816 voters will decide the fate of 676 candidates in this phase.
Polling for the seventh phase, which will be the last phase, will be held on March 7. The counting of votes will be done on March 10.
( With inputs from ANI )
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