Campaign ends in 8 UP constituencies for 2nd phase of Lok Sabha polls

Lucknow, Apr 24 (PTI) Campaigning for the second phase of polling slated for April 26 in eight Lok Sabha constituencies of Uttar Pradesh came to an end on Wednesday evening.
     The eight constituencies where voting will be held on Friday are Amroha, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Bulandshahr, Aligarh and Mathura.
     Prominent among the total of 91 candidates whose future will be decided in the second phase of polling are actor Hema Malini, who is seeking a third term from Mathura; and Arun Govil, who played the role of Lord Rama in the famed TV serial Ramayan. He has been fielded by the saffron party from his native place Meerut. He criss-crossed the constituency to seek support of the people.
     The Congress' Danish Ali from Amroha and the BJP's Atul Garg from Ghaziabad and Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Buddha Nagar toured their constituencies seeking the people's support.
     Altogether, UP has 80 parliamentary constituencies and polling will take place in all the seven phases of the Lok Sabha election.
     The election, which is poised for a three-cornered contest with the NDA, the INDIA bloc and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fielding their candidates, witnessed senior leaders of all the political parties going all out electioneering.
     Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath campaigned for the ruling NDA.
     Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, BSP president Mayawati and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Singh were on a hectic campaign trail of these constituencies during the past couple of days.
     The prime minister at an election rally in Aligarh, a constituency with a sizeable Muslim population, on Monday accused the Congress of planning to redistribute the people's property if it is voted to power, but stopped short of saying that the wealth would go to Muslims.
     Modi accused the opposition Congress and the SP of following a policy of appeasement and yet doing nothing to uplift the socio-economic condition of the community.
     Yadav hit out at the BJP saying "speaking wrong things about a particular community by naming it is an insult to that community spread across the world".
     Mayawati, in a poll rally at Bulandshahr the same day, had accused the BJP for taking the credit for the development of the Noida and Greater Nodia region by the BSP government in UP.
     Among the eight constituencies going to the polls in this phase, the BJP had won seven seats in the 2019 elections while the BSP had got Amroha. Amroha MP Danish Ali is in the fray as a candidate of the INDIA bloc from the same seat.
     According to the Election Commission rules, all election campaign activities carried out by the political parties, their candidates and the representatives came to a close at 6 pm, 48 hours preceding the end of the polling period, in order to conduct free, inclusive and fair elections.
     There are 1.67 crore voters in these eight Lok Sabha constituencies of the second phase, out of which 90.11 lakh are male voters, 77.38 lakh are female voters and 787 are of the third gender.
     There are a total of 7,797 polling stations and 17,677 polling booths in these constituencies.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)