Lucknow: All the 14 seats in UP voting in phase 5 are significant for the Bharatiya Janata Party as it will seek to repeat its 2019 performance when it won 13 of these 14 seats. The only seat that BJP lost in 2019 was Raebareli. Congress’s Sonia Gandhi won the seat.
Fourteen parliamentary seats of Uttar Pradesh, including Raebareli, Amethi and state capital Lucknow, will go to polls in the fifth phase of Lok Sabha Elections on Monday, May 20.
Overall 49 seats across 6 states and 2 union territories will exercise their right to franchise in this phase of general elections.
Apart from Raebareli, Amethi and Lucknow, the other seats of Uttar Pradesh voting on Monday, include Mohanlalganj, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Jhansi, Banda, Fatehpur, Kaushambhi, Faizabad, Barabanki, Kaiserganj and Gonda.
Raebareli and Amethi are considered Gandhi family bastions. While Sonia Gandhi, the then Congress chief, won Raebareli last time, her son Rahul Gandhi lost from Amethi seat to Union Minister Smriti Irani.
This time Rahul Gandhi is contesting from Raebareli seat. The BJP has fielded state minister Dinesh Pratap Singh against Rahul Gandhi, who has also contested from Wayanad in Kerala.
From Amethi, the Congress has fielded long-time Gandhi family loyalist, KL Sharma against Smriti Irani.
In Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh capital, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is seeking a third straight term. Singh is pitted against Ravidas Mehrotra of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Sarwar Malik.
Lucknow seat, once represented by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has been a BJP stronghold since 1991.
