Lucknow In Uttar Pradesh, where voting is taking place in 14 constituencies for the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections, 12.89 percent of voters turned out to cast ballots as of nine in the morning.Voting started at 7 a.m. and will run until 6 p.m.
The Election Commission reports that up until nine in the morning, Amethi recorded a voter turnout of 13.45%; Banda recorded 14.57%; Barabanki recorded 12.73%; Faizabad recorded 14%; Fatehpur recorded 14.28%; Gonda recorded 9.55%; Hamirpur recorded 13.61%; Jalaun recorded 12.80%; Kaisarganj recorded 13.4%; Kaushambi recorded 10.49%; Lucknow recorded 10.39%; Mohanlalganj recorded 13.86%; and Rae Bareli recorded 13.60 percent.
In the Lucknow East assembly constituency, 10.88% of voters cast ballots.
Along with Ministers of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, other contenders include Union Minister of State for MSME Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Kaushal Kishor, and Minister of State for Consumer Affairs Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
Rae Bareli was previously represented by Rahul Gandhi, the Congress leader, and his mother, Sonia Gandhi, the former president of the party.
There are 144 candidates running in the 14 constituencies, and about 2.71 crore voters are entitled to cast a ballot.
This phase saw the BJP give tickets to eleven of its current Lok Sabha MPs, while fielding new candidates in Kaisarganj and the Barabanki seat.
The Congress has fielded K L Sharma from Amethi, Tanuj Punia from Barabanki, and Pradeep Jain ‘Aditya’ from Jhansi as members of the INDIA bloc, while Samajwadi Party candidates are vying for the remaining seats.
Prime Minister Singh is considering running for a fourth term in Lucknow. He will compete against Lucknow Central’s current SP MLA, Ravidas Mehrotra.
Irani, a union minister, was nominated from the nearby Amethi constituency.
The BJP’s Karan Bhushan Singh, son of former MP and former president of the Wrestling Federation of India Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, is running against the SP’s Bhagat Ram in the Kaisarganj Lok Sabha seat.
Awadhesh Prasad, the SP MLA from Milkipur assembly constituency in Ayodhya district, and incumbent BJP MP Lallu Singh, who is aiming for a hat-trick, will compete for the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, which contains the holy town of Ayodhya.
The BJP’s Kunwar Pushpendra Singh Chandel, who is running for a third term, and the SP’s Ajendra Singh Lodhi are facing off in Hamirpur.
In Gonda, SP’s Shreya Verma faces off against BJP’s Kirti Vardhan Singh, who is considering a fifth term.
R K Singh Patel, running for a third term, is facing off against SP candidate Krishna Devi Shivshankar Patel in the Banda election.
In the Kaushambi constituency, Vinod Kumar Sonkar—who is aiming for a hat-trick of victories—will face SP candidate Pushpendra Saroj, the son of SP leader Indrajeet Saroj.
Aiming for a sixth term, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma takes on SP candidate Narayan Das Ahirwar in Jalaun.
The bypoll for the Lucknow East assembly seat was required after Ashutosh Tandon, the incumbent MLA, passed away on November 9, 2023.