By PTI
LUCKNOW: Over 35 per cent voter turnout was recorded in the first six hours of polling for the seventh and last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections for 54 seats on Monday.
Voting started at 7 am and will end at 4 pm in Chakia (Chandauli), Robertsganj and Duddhi (Sonbhadra) seats while in the rest of the segments, it will continue till 6 pm.
The districts where polls are underway in this phase are Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra.
The voting percentage till 1 pm was 35.51 per cent, according to the ECI’s Voter Turnout app.
While Azamgarh witnessed 34.60 per cent voting, Bhadohi saw 35.60 per cent, Chandauli 38.45 per cent, Ghazipur 34.15 per cent, Jaunpur 35.80 per cent, Mau 37.08 per cent, Mirzapur 38.05 per cent, Sonbhadra 35.68 per cent and Varanasi 33.55 per cent, it said.
A total of 613 candidates are in the fray on various seats, including those falling in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary segment Varanasi.
The fate of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party president Om Prakash Rajbhar and several state ministers will be decided in this round, in which 2.06 crore people are eligible to vote.
Besides state Tourism Minister Neelkanth Tiwari (Varanasi South), other ministers in the fray in the last leg of the elections are Anil Rajbhar (Shivpur-Varanasi), Ravindra Jaiswal (Varanasi North), Girish Yadav (Jaunpur) and Ramashankar Singh Patel (Marihan-Mirzapur).
Dara Singh Chauhan, who had resigned from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and had joined the SP, is contesting from Ghosi in Mau.
Om Prakash Rajbhar (Zahoorabad), Dhananjay Singh (Malhani-Jaunpur) as the JD(U) candidate, and Abbas Ansari, the son of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, from Mau Sadar seat, are contesting in this phase.
Campaigning in this phase reached its crescendo with Prime Minister Modi leading the BJP’s poll blitzkrieg in Varanasi and its adjoining districts.
The state has 403 Assembly seats and the results of the elections will be declared on March 10.
