LUCKNOW: The elections to the 18th Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh begin on Wednesday with nominations for the first phase of the seven-phase polls in the state, the Election Commission said.
Eight parliamentary constituencies in Uttar Pradesh --- Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Nagina (Scheduled Caste), Moradabad, Rampur and Pilibhit -- will vote in the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls on April 19.
According to the Election Commission, the notification for the polls will be issued on March 20, while March 27 is the last date for filing of nominations.
The scrutiny of nominations will be done on March 28 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 30. The counting of votes will take place on June 4, the Election Commission added.
This time the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has announced to contest the elections alone while the Samajwadi Party (SP) has formed an alliance with the Congress and both parties are part of the Opposition INDIA bloc.
The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 62 seats and its ally Apna Dal (Secular) two seats, decimating the SP-BSP alliance. The Congress won the lone Rae Bareli seat of Sonia Gandhi.
The Mayawati-led party was the biggest gainer in the SP-BSP alliance as it won 10 seats. Akhilesh Yadav's SP won five seats and the RLD could not 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 constituencies in 2019.
SP leader S.T. Hasan won the Moradabad Lok Sabha seat, while Azam Khan of the SP emerged victorious from the Rampur Lok Sabha seat.
Haji Fazlur Rehman, Malook Nagar and Girish Chandra of the BSP won Saharanpur, Bijnor and Nagina (Scheduled Caste) Lok Sabha seats respectively in the last general elections.
The BJP, this time, hopes to win all the seats in the first phase since it has strengthened its position with the alliance with RLD in the region.
The RLD is contesting the Bijnor seat where it has fielded Chandan Chauhan while the BJP is contesting the remaining seven seats in this phase.
Pilibhit, however, remains a seat of dilemma since the BJP has not yet cleared the candidature of its sitting MP Varun Gandhi from this seat.