Nomination for the first phase of Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh from Wednesday

Lucknow: The nomination process is beginning with the release of the notification on Wednesday for the first phase of the seven-phase elections for the 18th Lok Sabha in Uttar Pradesh. Voting will be held in the first phase on April 19 in eight parliamentary seats of the state – Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Nagina (SC), Moradabad, Rampur and Pilibhit. According to the Election Commission, the notification for the elections will be issued on March 20, while March 27 is the last date for filing nominations. Scrutiny of nomination papers will be held on March 28 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 30. Counting of votes will take place on June 4. This time, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has announced to contest the elections alone, while Samajwadi Party (SP) has formed an alliance with Congress and both the parties are part of the opposition ‘India’ faction. Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance. The BJP won 62 seats and its ally Apna Dal (Secular) won two seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, wiping out the SP-BSP alliance. Congress won Sonia Gandhi’s only Rae Bareli seat. In the SP-BSP alliance, the Mayawati-led party gained the most as it won 10 seats. Akhilesh Yadav’s SP won five seats while RLD could not even open its account. Of the eight Lok Sabha seats going to polls in the first phase, the BJP had won Muzaffarnagar (Sanjeev Kumar Balyan), Kairana (Pradeep Kumar Chaudhary) and Pilibhit (Varun Gandhi) parliamentary seats in 2019. SP leader S.T. Hasan won from Moradabad Lok Sabha seat, while SP’s Azam Khan won from Rampur Lok Sabha seat. In the last general elections, BSP’s Haji Fazlur Rehman, Malook Nagar and Girish Chandra had won the Saharanpur, Bijnor and Nagina (Scheduled Caste) Lok Sabha seats respectively. BJP is expected to win all the seats in the first phase this time as it has strengthened its position in the region by forming an alliance with RLD. RLD is contesting from Bijnor seat where it has fielded Chandan Chauhan while BJP is contesting on the remaining seven seats in this phase. However, Pilibhit remains a dilemma seat as the BJP has not yet approved the candidature of its sitting MP Varun Gandhi from the seat.