The first phase of the seven-phase election in Uttar Pradesh (UP) began on Thursday, 10 February, with 58 Assembly seats in 11 districts – spanning the Jat-dominant belt of western UP – going to the polls.
The voting began at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm, and the final counting of votes will take place on 10 March.
Thursday's polls will see a key battle play out between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), too, has influence in some constituencies.
The 11 districts where the elections will be held are Shamli, Hapur, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Mathura, and Agra.
There are a total of 623 candidates contesting in the 58 constituencies. The fate of nine ministers in the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in UP will be decided in the first phase. They are Suresh Rana, Atul Garg, Shrikant Sharma, Sandeep Singh, Anil Sharma, Kapil Dev Agarwal, Dinesh Khatik, Dr GS Dharmesh, and Chaudhary Laxmi Narain.
In the 2017 elections, the BJP had won 53 seats out of 58, while the SP and the BSP had got two seats each, and the RLD had won one seat. Here's all you need to know about this phase of polling.
Key Constituencies
Noida: In Noida, BJP's UP vice-president Pankaj Singh will face a challenge from SP's Sunil Choudhary, Congress' Pankhuri Pathak, and Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Pankaj Awana.
In 2017, Singh, the son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, got 64.29 percent (over 1.62 lakh of the total 2.54 lakh) of the total votes polled and was elected to the UP Assembly for the first time.
Muzaffarnagar: In the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, over 60 people lost their lives, and several were displaced. The riots created a gap between the much-celebrated ties between the Muslim and Jat communities.
The BJP subsequently won the Jat farmers' support significantly – in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, 2017 UP Assembly polls, and 2019 Lok Sabha polls. But the 2020-21 farmer protests helped rekindle the Jat-Muslim ties.
While the BJP is trying to remind the people of the riots, the SP-RLD alliance has benefited from the farmers' unions speaking out against the BJP and asking voters not to vote for the saffron party.
Meanwhile, the BJP is fielding sitting MLA and Minister Kapil Dev Aggarwal from the seat. The SP-RLD alliance has decided to field Saurabh, and the Congress has fielded Subodh Sharma.
Baghpat: The SP-RLD alliance will be fielding Ahmad Hameed, the son of former Energy Minister late Nawab Kokab Hameed, from the Baghpat seat.
Yogesh Dhama is the BJP's candidate for the seat. In the past election, Hameed, who was a BSP candidate from Baghpat, had lost to Dhama. Meanwhile, the Congress party has fielded Anil Dev Tyagi from the Baghpat Assembly seat.
Mathura: The BJP has fielded Shrikant Sharma, Power Minister in the outgoing government, from Mathura. Meanwhile, the Congress has fielded Pradeep Mathur from the seat. So far, only the BJP or the Congress has held the seat.
The SP has fielded former MLA Devendra Agarwal from the seat and will be looking to make its debut from the Mathura seat this year.
Atrauli: The BJP will be looking to repeat its 2017 performance in the Atrauli Assembly seat, which falls under Aligarh district.
The party has reposed its faith in Sandeep Singh, who won the 2017 elections by a handsome margin, garnering 49.61 percent of the votes.
Sandeep Singh has also managed to keep a low profile and steer clear of any controversy during his tenure.
Meanwhile, the SP has fielded Viresh Yadav from the seat, and the Congress has fielded Dharmendra Lodhi from the seat.
Kairana: The SP-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance recently announced Nahid Hasan as their candidate from the Kairana Assembly seat of UP's Shamli district.
However, Nahid was arrested on 16 January under the Gangster Act in one of the many cases registered against him.
The BJP had then launched a scathing attack over his criminal past and had also raised the issue of the mass exodus of Hindus from the area during the SP government.
Kairana has been a Hasan family stronghold.
Meanwhile, the BJP has fielded Mriganka Singh from the seat.
In 2017, SP's Nihad Hasan had won the Kairana seat, with Mriganka coming second. However, the duo will face a challenge from Nihad's sister Iqra, who had filed a nomination as an independent candidate in January.
Thana Bhawan: UP Cane Development Minister and BJP leader Suresh Rana will face a challenge from Congress' Satya Sayyam Saini and RLD's Ashraf Ali, the former chairperson of the Jalalabad civic body, for the Thana Bhawan seat.
In the 2017 polls, Rana, who was also named in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, beat the BSP's Abdul Waris Khan by a margin of over 16,000 votes. However, in the 2012 polls, Rana had just managed to beat RLD's Ashraf Ali by a margin of 265 votes.
Key Candidates
Pankaj Singh: The incumbent MLA in the Noida Assembly seat, Pankaj Singh is aiming for a second straight term.
In the 2017 polls, Singh had beat SP's Sunil Choudhary by a massive margin of 1,04,016 votes.
Singh, the eldest son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, will battle it out against AAP's Pankaj Awana, Congress' Pankhuri Pathak, SP's Choudhary, and BSP's Kripa Ram Sharma for the Noida seat.
Mriganka Singh: The eldest daughter of three-time BJP MLA Hukum Singh, Mriganka lost the 2017 Assembly polls from Kairana to SP's Nahid Hasan by 21,162 votes.
Mriganka had also lost the 2018 Kairana Lok Sabha bypoll to joint Opposition candidate RLD's Tabassum Hasan.
The bypoll was necessitated after the death of her father. Singh was also ignored for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Ahmad Hameed: Ahmad Hameed, the candidate fielded by the SP-RLD alliance from the Baghpat seat, will take on the incumbent BJP MLA Yogesh Dhama.
Recently, a fake tweet in the name of RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary had attacked Hameed, the son of former Energy Minister late Nawab Kokab Hameed, and questioned his party's decision to field him from Baghpat. However, Chaudhary later clarified that the tweet was fake.
Baby Rani Maurya: The 65-year-old Baby Rani Maurya is the BJP's candidate from the Agra Rural Assembly seat. The BJP decided to field Baby, the former governor of Uttarkhand, after dropping the sitting MLA Hemlata Diwakar.
Sandeep Singh: The current Minister of State for Education in UP and the grandson of Kalyan Singh, Sandeep won the 2017 Assembly polls from Atrauli by a huge margin of 50,967 votes. He would be looking forward to finishing with a repeat performance.
Strongholds
Kairana: Since the 1970s, the Kairana Assembly seat has been represented by either the Hasans or the Singhs, except for Bashir Ahmed in 1977 and Rajeshwar Bansal in 1989.
Late BJP stalwart Hukum Singh won the seat four consecutive times since 1996 and later represented the seat in Lok Sabha in 2014.
Since then, Nahid Hasan has twice successfully contested the Kairana Assembly seat, defeating BJP's Anil Kumar in the 2014 bypolls and Hukum Singh's daughter Mriganka Singh in 2017.
Factors Affecting Parties
The BJP has fielded 17 candidates from the Jat community, while the RLD has fielded 12 candidates and the SP six.
However, this time, the loyalty of the Jats to the saffron cause, especially in Muzaffarnagar, seems to be wavering, and there is anger within the community over the now-withdrawn three farm laws.
There are also many who voted for the BJP in 2017 but haven't been able to get over the Khalistani-Aatankwadi barbs thrown by members of the party during the farmer protests.
Payment of sugarcane dues is another reason behind their anger.
There is also a whole section of Jat farmers who voted for the BJP in 2017 but regret that decision now due to rising unemployment and lack of jobs.
Meanwhile, the SP and the RLD have tried to take advantage of the nostalgia factor of the once-held camaraderie between the Jat and the Muslim communities.
However, things began to go downhill when the tickets for the first phase of polls were announced.
Six assembly constituencies lie in Muzaffarnagar, a district with a 40 percent Muslim population. And yet, not one of the candidates fielded here by the SP-RLD alliance was from the Muslim community. This did not go down well with some in the community.
The 'secular' parties and alliances are also often accused of meting out a step-motherly treatment to the Muslims.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)