Lucknow, Jun 23: The polling for two Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh and Rampur began at 7 am on Thursday. Both the seats are considered as the bastions of the Opposition Samajwadi Party.
As per the Election Commission, 19 candidates are in the fray in the two Lok Sabha constituencies where over 35 lakh people are eligible to vote in the bypolls.
The bypolls to the Azamgarh seat were necessitated by the resignation of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, who was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly as an MLA in the elections earlier this year. The Rampur seat was vacated by senior SP leader Azam Khan, who too was elected to the state Assembly.
The Azamgarh seat will witness a triangular contest among BJP's Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Nirhua', a famous Bhojpuri actor-singer, SP's Dharmendra Yadav and BSP's Shah Alam, also known as Guddu Jamali.
In Azamgarh, of the 18.38 lakh voters, 9,70,249 are men, 8,67,942 women and 36 third gender.
Officials said 2,176 booths are set up at 1,149 polling stations of the constituency, where an estimated 15 per cent of the residents are Muslim. All four assembly constituencies--Azamgarh, Mubarakpur, Sagdi, Gopalpur and Mehnagar--falling in this Lok Sabha seat were won by the SP in the recent assembly elections.
Interestingly, BSP chief Mayawati has not fielded a candidate in Rampur.
According to an official statement issued here by the Election Commission, two general and as many expense observers have been deputed by it to keep an eye on the polls. Besides, 291 sector magistrates, 40 zonal magistrates and 433 micro-observers have also been deputed, it said. For ensuring security and peaceful conduct of the polls, adequate number of central and state forces have been deployed, PTI reported.
The responsibility for the security of EVMs and strongrooms has been given to central forces. According to officials, 13 candidates are in the fray from Azamgarh, where 18.38 lakh people are eligible to vote. Six candidates are contesting from Rampur, which has 17.06 lakh voters. From Rampur, the BJP has fielded Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi, who recently joined the party, while the SP has fielded Asim Raja, handpicked by Khan.
PTI