Elections will be completed in UP today

Lucknow. The ongoing assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh will conclude on Monday. Voting for the seventh and last phase will be held on Monday. Voting will be held in 54 seats in nine districts in the last phase. Campaigning for these seats ended on Saturday evening. It has been said by the Election Commission that all preparations have been made for the last phase of polling and tight security arrangements have been made. Many Bahubali are in the field in the last phase. Bahubali candidates like Vijay Mishra and Dhananjay Singh, including Mukhtar Ansari’s son, are in the fray in this phase.

In the seventh phase and the final phase, a total of 613 candidates are trying their luck in 54 seats in nine districts. In the seventh phase, polling will be held in three divisions of Purvanchal – Azamgarh, Varanasi and nine districts of Vindhyachal – Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra. Out of these 54 seats, BJP had won 29, SP 11, BSP six, Apna Dal four, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party three and Nishad Party one seat in the 2017 elections.

There are a large number of candidates with criminal antecedents among the 613 candidates who are trying their luck in the final phase. According to an assessment by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), 28 per cent of the candidates in this phase have a criminal background. At the same time, the cases of serious criminal antecedents are 22 percent. In the earlier six phases, 26 per cent candidates were of criminal background. In the last phase, the number of candidates with tainted image in the candidates of all parties including SP and BJP is significant.