55.13% voter turnout recorded in seventh phase of Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls

Lucknow, March 7 (PTI): Over 55 per cent voter turnout was recorded in the seventh and last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections for 54 seats on Monday.

Voting started at 7 am. It ended at 4 pm in the Chakia (Chandauli), Robertsganj and the Duddhi (Sonbhadra) seats, while in the rest of the segments, it continued till 6 pm.

The districts that voted in this phase are Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra.

The voting percentage was recorded at 55.13 per cent, according to the Election Commission’s ‘Voter Turnout’ application.

The final polling figure will be available on Tuesday, an official said.

According to the Election Commission, the polling percentage in the seventh phase of the Assembly elections in 2017 was 59.56 per cent.

This time, Azamgarh witnessed 53.69 per cent voting, Bhadohi 54.26 per cent, Chandauli 61.99 per cent, Ghazipur 55.60 per cent, Jaunpur 53.55 per cent, Mau 57.02 per cent, Mirzapur 54.93 per cent, Sonbhadra 58.69 per cent and Varanasi 52.79 per cent, it showed.

A total of 613 candidates are in the fray for the 54 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 were eligible to vote.

Besides state Tourism Minister Neelkanth Tiwari, who is contesting for the Varanasi South seat, 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 resigned from the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and joined the Samajwadi Party (SP), is contesting from the Ghosi seat 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 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.