Lok Sabha elections 2019: Stage set for polling in 91 constituencies

New Delhi: The bugle for 2019 Lok Sabha elections will be sounded on Thursday, April 11, when 91 constituencies across 18 states and two union territories will cast their vote in the first phase of the seven phased polls.

While all the 25 seats of Andhra Pradesh and entire 17 seats of Telangana will go for polling in the first phase, eight crucial seats of western Uttar Pradesh too will be covered on Thursday. These are Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida).

Apart from this, all the five parliamentary constituencies of Uttarakhand will also witness polling on April 11. The eight seats of western Uttar Pradesh which will go to polls in the firstphase of Lok Sabha elections, sees the BJP facing a tough contest in all the seats due to the alliance of Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) against it.

The Congress is also seeking to put up a good show and is likely to cut into votes of both the BJP and the combined alliance. A total of around 1.5 crore voters from these eight seats will vote in the first of the seven phases on Thursday.

They are almost 10.45 per cent of the total over 14 crore voters who will poll for all the 80 Lok Sabha seats from the state. The first phase of polling in western Uttar Pradesh is crucial as any polarisation in this region — as seen during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections —may help the BJP get an impressive tally.

Three union Ministers —V.K. Singh (Ghaziabad), Satyapal Singh (Baghpat) and Mahesh Sharma (Gautam Buddha Nagar) are in the fray as is RLD chief Ajit Singh (Muzaffarnagar) and his son Jayant Chaudhary (Baghpat).

In Muzaffarnagar, Ajit Singh, a candidate of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, is pitted against former Uni-on minister Sanjiv Balyan, where Muslim voters dominate in all five assembly segments of this seat.

There are approximately 17 lakh voters, among whom Muslims constitute over 26 per cent followed by 15 per cent Jatavs and around eight per cent Jats.

In Ghaziabad, Union Minister V.K. Singh, who is seeking his re-election, is locked in a triangular contest with Suresh Bansal, the candidate of the SP-RLD-BSP coalition and Congress nominee Dolly Sharma, a young professional with a political lineage.

From Gautam Budh Nagar (Noida), the fate of Union Minister Mahesh Sharma is at stake here in a triangular contest.

The Congress has fielded Arvind Kumar Singh, while the BSP’s Satveer is the joint candidate of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.

Union Minister Satyapal Singh is seeking re-election from Baghpat, a Jat dominated constituency. RLD leader Ajit Singh’s son Jayant Chaudhary is contesting against him as the joint SP-BSP-RLD candidate. Uttarakhand will see 52 candidates vying for all the five Parliamentary seats in the first phase of the election.

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