Uttar Pradesh’s seven-point assembly polls are set to begin on Thursday. In the first phase, voting will be held in 56 seats of 11 districts of western Uttar Pradesh in accordance with the COVID rules. The fate of 623 candidates will be decided. But before the polls on Wednesday, Yogi Adityanath, the state’s chief minister and BJP candidate, wrote in a tweet, “You must vote. One of your votes will determine the future of Uttar Pradesh. Otherwise, it will not take long for Uttar Pradesh to become Kashmir, Kerala, and Bengal,” he said.
In the 2017 assembly polls, the BJP won 53 of the 58 seats. The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BSP have two and one RLD. According to some political analysts, Padma Shibir has won a landslide victory in the Jat-affected area due to polarization of votes after the Muzaffarnagar violence. A number of opinion polls have predicted that the SP-RLD alliance could hit the BJP hard in the area this time.
Notable candidates in the first round of voting are Defense Minister Rajnath Singh’s son Pankaj (Noida) and former Uttarakhand Governor Bebirani Maurya (Agra) and grandson of the late former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh Sandeep (Atrauli). They are all fighting on BJP tickets. Incidentally, the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls will end on March 8. The count with the other four states is March 10.
