New Delhi: Voting is underway for the first phase of assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. 58 Constituencies spread across 11 districts are going to polls in this phase.
About 7.95 percent polling has been recorded till 10 AM.
Voting, which began at 7 AM, will conclude at 6 in the evening.
The districts where polling is being held today are Shamli (Prabuddh Nagar), Meerut, Hapur (Panchsheel Nagar), Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar, Aligarh, Agra, Gautam Buddha Nagar and Mathura.
A total of 623 candidates including 73 women are in the fray in the first phase. Around 2 crore 28 lakh voters are expected to cast their votes in this phase. These include, 1.24 crore male, 1.04 crore female and 1,448 third gender voters.
Prominent BJP candidates who are in fray in this phase include former Uttarakhand Governor Baby Rani Maurya, nine Ministers including Suresh Rana, Shrikant Sharma and Choudhari Lakshmi Narain, State General Secretary Pankaj Singh along with Sangeet Som, Satyaveer Tyagi and Mriganka Singh.
Samajwadi Party has fielded former Minister Shahid Manzoor along with Nahid Hasan, Sanjay Lathar and Sunil Chaudhari while the BSP has fielded Madan Chauhan and Kripa Ram Sharma during this phase. Avtar Singh Bhadana, Rajpal, Gajraaj Singh, Tej Pal Singh and Manisha Ahlawat are some prominent candidates from Rashtriya Lok Dal while Upendra Singh and Pankhuri Pathak from Congress and Pankaj Awana of Aam Aadmi Party are also in the fray.
