By IANS,
Lucknow : The penultimate round of elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly will be held Tuesday with more than 1,000 candidates, including Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh’s son Jayant Chaudhary, testing their luck in 68 seats in western Uttar Pradesh.
Areas like Noida and Sahibabad adjoining the national capital will be going to the polls in the sixth of the seven-phased elections along with Agra, Aligarh, Baraut and others.
While Aligarh sees the most number of candidates at 30, Khair has the least number of candidates contesting at nine. The largest constituency is Sahibabad and the smallest Baraut.
An electorate of 21.4 million will choose their representatives in the 403-member house from amongst 1,103 candidates, including just 86 women. There are a total of 22,137 polling stations.
The stakes are high with the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP) , Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress-RLD alliance vying for power in the country’s most populous state.
The Congress-RLD combo have high hopes from the Agra and Aligarh divisions, together called Braj Prant with 40 seats, due to Jat support. The BSP is equally strong on the turf, called the dalit capital of north India, said experts.
The votes for the elections that began Feb 8 and end March 3 will be counted on March 6.