80 parliamentary constituencies in UP to vote in seven phases

Lucknow, March 10 (IANS) Elections for Uttar Pradesh's 80 parliamentary seats will be held in seven phases, beginning with the first phase on April 11, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora announced in New Delhi on Sunday.

As per the schedule, eight parliamentary constituencies each will go to polls in the first and the second phase, to be held on April 11 and April 18, respectively.

Ten constituencies will go to vote in the third phase on April 23, 13 in the fourth phase on April 29, 14 in the fifth phase on May 6, and 14 in the sixth phase on May 12. The remaining 13 constituencies will be voting in the last phase on May 19.

Counting for all the 80 constituencies, of the total 543 seats, will be held on May 23.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has 71 seats in the 16th Lok Sabha, while its alliance partner Apna Dal (S) has 2. The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress have five and two seats, respectively. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is not represented in the present Lok Sabha.

While the SP and the BSP have buried their two-decade rivalry to contest elections as alliance partners, the Congress is going it alone and has pinned its hopes on the political debut of Gandhi family scion Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Between them, the SP and the BSP have agreed to contest on 37 seats and 38 seats, respectively.

Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), also an alliance partner of the SP-BSP combine, will contest three seats -- Mathura, Muzaffarnagar and Baghpat.

The SP-BSP combine has left two seats for the Congress, which has yet again fielded UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Amethi.