Voting today for fourth phase: All eyes on Lakhimpur & Lucknow

Before the incident, Ashish was a frontrunner to contest on a BJP ticket from Nighasan Assembly segment in Lakhimpur Kheri. However, with Ashish in jail, the BJP has given the ticket to sitting MLA Shashank Verma who had won the seat in the by-election following the death of his father and MLA Ram Kumar Verma.

While the BJP refused to accept the Opposition’s demand to sack Ajay Mishra from the Union Cabinet, the party has kept him away from major political events to avoid the backlash of local voters. Despite all its top leaders campaigning in the district, the BJP is keeping fingers crossed about the impact of the October 3 incident on the party’s performance in Lakhimpur Kheri and adjoining districts in the Terai belt.

In 2017, the BJP had swept all the eight Assembly seats in the district, recording a major jump from its 2012 performance, when the party had won just one seat in the district.

The largest district of UP, Lakhimpur Kheri is dominated by Brahmins, followed by Muslims and Kurmis among non-Yadav OBCs. It is 80 per cent rural with a majority of the population depending on sugarcane farming.

Many farmers in the district are prosperous Sikhs who settled in the fertile region post-Partition.

The BJP fears that the spillover effect of the Lakhimpur Kheri violence will also be felt in bordering districts of Pilibhit, Shahjahanpur, Hardoi, Sitapur, and Bahraich, where also the party had made impressive gains in 2017.

In this phase, nine Assembly seats of Lucknow district are also going to the polls. But all eyes will be on Sarojini Nagar where BJP has fielded former Enforcement Director officer Rajeshwar Singh, who took voluntary retirement just a day before he was given ticket by the ruling party. Against him, the SP has fielded former minister Abhishek Mishra. The contest has become interesting as both the BSP and Congress have fielded local popular candidates.

The seat was won by BJP MLA Swati Singh, who was also a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government. But she was denied the ticket this time.

In Malihabad (SC reserved) seat, BJP has fielded sitting MLA Jaya Devi, the wife of Union Minister of State and Mohanlalganj MP Kaushal Kishore. The SP had earlier fielded former MP Sushila Saroj from there. However, she asked the party to shift her to Mohanlalganj seat. The SP then pitted Surendra Kumar against Jaya Devi.

In the Gandhi family bastion of Rae Bareli, the prestige of Congress president Sonia Gandhi will be at stake in the Assembly segments of her Lok Sabha constituency.

Sonia Gandhi was the only Congress leader elected to Lok Sabha from UP in the 2019 elections as her son Rahul lost from adjoining Amethi.

The two sitting Congress MLAs — Aditi Singh and Rakesh Singh — from Rae Bareli are contesting on BJP tickets this time. Rakesh and Aditi Singh belong to prominent political families in Rae Bareli and were associated with the Congress for a long period.

In Unnao, the Congress has fielded 55-year-old Asha Singh, the mother of the girl who was allegedly raped by former BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar. Sengar is currently in jail.

Asha Singh is up against the BJP’s sitting MLA Pankaj Gupta and Dr Abhinav Kumar of the Samajwadi Party. The BSP has fielded newcomer Devendra Singh from Unnao.