LS polls: Four candidates file nominations in UP

Lucknow, Mar 30 (PTI) Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said that four nominations were filed on Saturday in three of the eight Lok Sabha seats that will go into polls in the second phase of the seven-phase parliamentary elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Eight parliamentary constituencies in Uttar Pradesh -- Amorha, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautambuddha Nagar, Bulandshahr (SC), Aligarh and Mathura -- will vote in the second phase of the Lok Sabha polls on April 26.

The nominations for the same began on Thursday, said Rinwa. Two persons filed nominations in Meerut and one each in Ghaziabad and Mathura constituencies on Saturday, the officer added.

According to the Election Commission, the notification for the polls were also issued on Thursday, with April 4 being the last date for filing of nominations.

The scrutiny of nominations will be done on April 5 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is April 8. The counting of votes will take place on June 4, the EC said.

According to the EC, there are more than 1.67 crore voters in these eight Lok Sabha seats. Of these, 90.11 lakh are males and 77.38 females while 787 belong to the third gender. There are a total of 7,797 polling stations and 17,677 polling booths in these seats.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will contest alone, while the Samajwadi Party has formed an alliance with the Congress as part of the opposition INDIA bloc.

The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), earlier a part of the opposition bloc, 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 (S) two seats. The Congress won its lone seat when Sonia Gandhi won from Rae Bareli.

The Mayawati-led party was the biggest gainer in the SP-BSP alliance with 10 seats. Akhilesh Yadav's SP won five and the RLD couldn't 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.

Samajwadi Party's ST Hasan won the Moradabad Lok Sabha seat, while Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party emerged victorious from the Rampur Lok Sabha seat.

Haji Fazlur Rehman, Malook Nagar and Girish Chandra of the BSP won Saharanpur, Bijnor and Nagina (SC) Lok Sabha seats in the last general election. PTI CDN AS AS