Uttar Pradesh first phase election begins

Polling for the first phase of the assembly elections in India's most populous and politically vital state Uttar Pradesh began on Wednesday with voters in 55 constituencies in 10 districts fixing the fate of two ministers, 31 MLAs and 15 former ministers.

A high pitched campaign for the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh election ended on Monday evening with Congress poster boy Rahul Gandhi hogging all the media limelight during the day with his addresses at Varanasi and Ghazipur.

While Congress has staked its prestige to make its presence felt in a big way in this election and unseat Mayawati of the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the latter also spared no opportunity to attack her rivals- ranging from Congress general secretary Gandhi to Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh Yadav.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also campaigned hard with its leader from Madhya Pradesh Uma Bharati throwing her hat in the ring.

BJP patriarch L K Advani also campaigned in Lucknow during the day besides other top leaders like Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and party president Nitin Gadkari holding public rallies across the state.

In the first phase, 10 districts are going to the polls under tight security arrangements. They are Sitapur, Barabanki, Faizabad, Balrampur, Gonda, Ambedkar Nagar, Bahraich, Shravasti, Siddharth Nagar and Basti.

The total electorate is 1.70 lakh strong and there are 862 candidates in the fight for 55 seats.

According to a poll monitor group National Election Watch, about 38 per cent candidates - which is a total of 109 contestants- in the first phase have criminal records.

After sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra´s campaign in Amethi and Rai Bareilly where she called for politics of development, on Monday Rahul Gandhi was the big draw and he said that he has no ´obsession´ of becoming the Prime Minister.

"The big politicians of India are obsessed towards becoming Prime Minister of this country. I have no such obsession. My obsession is solving the critical problems of Uttar Pradesh," he said.

Gandhi said at a press conference on Monday that he is committed to change Uttar Pradesh where people have been ´fooled´ by the successive governments in the past 22 years.

"The people are telling me that for 22 years, we have been fooled," Gandhi said.

"What has been going in Uttar Pradesh is crime, nothing less than that" he said.

UP is going to polls on Feb 8, Feb 11, Feb 15, Feb 19, Feb 23, Feb 28 and March 3.

Counting of votes is on March 6 along with all four other states that are going to elections.