By IANS,
Lucknow : Brisk polling was on Thursday in the fifth round of the seven-phase balloting in Uttar Pradesh, with the 49 constituencies falling mostly in the state’s badlands.
Chief Electoral Officer Umesh Sinha put the total polling till 1 p.m. at 39 percent. The 10-hour voting began at 7 in the morning.
A total of 15.6 million voters are eligible to pick 49 winners from among 829 candidates, including 87 women.
The main contestants are the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress and Samajwadi Party.
Apart from Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s bastion Etawah, other places where polling was on include Mainpuri, Firozabad, Etah, Auraiya, Kanpur, Jhansi, Hamirpur, Lalitpur and Jalaun.
This belt is an acid test for Mulayam Yadav.
Also at stake is the prestige of BJP star campaigner Uma Bharti because some of the areas border Madhya Pradesh, where she was a former chief minister.
While Uma Bharti is in the fray from Charkhari in Hamirpur district, Mulayam’s younger brother Shivpal Yadav is contesting from the family bastion, Jaswant Nagar in Etawah.
Heavy police deployment has been made for this phase, which covers a large part of central Uttar Pradesh, better known as the badlands.