UP elections: 53 seats to go for polls in fourth phase on Thursday

Fifty-three constituencies will see polling on Thursday in the fourth phase of staggered Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.

A total of 1.84 crore people will be eligible to vote in the election, whose main players are the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

In 2012, the Samajwadi Party won 24 of the 53 seats, the BSP 15, the Congress 6, the BJP five while three seats were bagged by the Peace Party.

There are 680 candidates in the fourth phase, including 61 women.

Prominent personalities include Utkarsha Mishra, son of former opposition leader in the outgoing assembly Swamy Prasad Maurya, independent Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya, Aradhna Mishra, daughter of Rajya Sabha member Pramod Tiwari, and Ujjwal Raman Singh, son of Samajwadi Party leader Rewati Raman Singh.

Around 1 crore of the voters are males and 84 lakh women. The third gender includes 1,034 voters.

The constituency with most candidates is Allahabad North (26) and the constituencies with the least number of nominees are Khaga and Kunda (six each).

In 17 constituencies, more than one woman is contesting, an Election Commission official said.

Lalitpur has the largest electorate (453,162) and Ayahshah the least (260,439). There are 19,487 polling stations in this phase.