Of the 13 Cantonment assembly seats in the country, six are in Uttar Pradesh which various political parties want to grab.
Apart from state capital Lucknow, five districts in UP have a Cantonment assembly constituency each. These are Meerut, Kanpur, Agra, Bareilly and Varanasi.
Going by the election results since 1991, voters in most of the Cantonment assembly seats have shown preference towards BJP.
But, in 2007 assembly elections, the saffron chariot met with resistance from BSP supremo Mayawati, whose social engineering formula queered its pitch.
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In 2012 assembly polls (post-delimitation), the BJP bastion of Lucknow Cantonment fell to the Congress, with Rita Bahuguna Joshi defeating three-time sitting MLA Suresh Chandra Tiwari.
Agra Cantonment (SC) saw BSP scoring a hat-trick, while Bareilly Cantonment saw the advent of BJP for the first time.
The BJP, however, continued its dominance in Meerut and Varanasi Cantonment seats (winning both for the 6th time) and Kanpur Cantonment (winning it for the 5th time).
In Varanasi Cantonment constituency, which goes to polls
in the last lap on March 8, Saurabh Srivastava (son of sitting MLA Jyotsana Srivastava) is contesting on a BJP ticket, and is being challenged by Ajoy Mukherjee (CPI), Anil Srivastava (Congress), Rijwan Ahmad (BSP) and 20 other candidates.
The other cantonment assembly constituencies located throughout the length and breadth of the country are Dehradun Cantonment (Uttarakhand), Jalandhar Cantonment (Punjab), Secunderabad Cantonment (SC) (Andhra Pradesh), Ambala Cantonment (Haryana), Jabalpur Cantonment (Madhya Pradesh), Pune Cantonment (SC) (Maharashtra) and Delhi Cantonment.
Meerut Cantonment was established by the British East India Company in 1803 after the Battle of Laswari.
The first war of independence in 1857 started from 'Kali Paltan' in Meerut Cantonment, and Indian soldiers stationed here actively participated in the rebellion.
Agra Cantonment was established in 1805, while Bareilly Kanpur and Varanasi Cantonments were established in 1811.