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The filing of nominations for eight Lok Sabha seats of Uttar Pradesh that will go to polls in the first phase of elections ended on Wednesday, Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said.
A total of 155 nominations have been filed in the eight Lok Sabha seats, of which 109 were filed on Wednesday, as per information provided by the state election commission.
Eight parliamentary constituencies -- Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Nagina, Moradabad, Rampur and Pilibhit -- will vote in the first phase on April 19.
Most nominations have been filed from Muzaffarnagar seat where 38 candidates are in the fray. A total of 23 nominations were filed in Bijnor, 18 each in Moradabad and Rampur, 17 in Kairana, 16 in Pilibhit, 13 in Saharanpur and 12 in Nagina.
UP cabinet minister Jitin Prasada, who is the BJP candidate frpm Pilibhit, was among those who filed their nominations on Wednesday.
From the Saharanpur Lok Sabha seat, nine candidates, including BJP's Raghav Lakhanpal filed their nominations during the day.
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In Kairana constituency, 10 candidates, including BJP's Pradeep Kumar, filed their nomination papers on Wednesday. Seven others had filed their nominations earlier.
On Wednesday, 27 candidates filed their nomination papers from Muzaffarnagar. In Bijnor, 19 candidates, including Chandan Chauhan of RLD and Deepak of Samajwadi Party, filed their nomination papers.
Seven candidates have filed the nomination papers from Nagina Lok Sabha seat on the last day of filing nominations. Twelve candidates from Moradabad filed their nominations.
From the Rampur seat, 13 candidates including BJP's Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi and Mohibulla Nadvi of SP filed their nomination papers. While in Pilibhit, 12 people filed their nominations papers.
Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said adequate security measures were in place for the submission of the nominations and that the entire process was videographed.
According to the Election Commission, the notification for the first phase of polls was issued on March 20 and March 27 was the last date for filing of nominations.
Scrutiny of nominations will be done on March 28 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 30.
This time, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has announced it would contest the elections alone, while the SP and the Congress -- both members of the opposition INDIA bloc, are fighting the polls together.
The Rashtriya Lok Dal has joined hands with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, of the 80 seats in the state, the BJP won 62 and its ally Apna Dal (S) two seats, decimating the SP-BSP alliance. The Congress won the lone Rae Bareli seat from where Sonia Gandhi was elected.
The Mayawati-led party was the biggest gainer in the SP-BSP alliance and it won 10 seats. Akhilesh Yadav's SP won five seats and the RLD could not win any seat.
Of the eight Lok Sabha seats going to polls in the first phase, the BJP had won the Muzaffarnagar (Sanjeev Kumar Balyan), Kairana (Pradeep Kumar Chaudhary) and the Pilibhit (Varun Gandhi) constituencies in 2019.
The SP's ST Hasan won the Moradabad seat, while Azam Khan emerged victorious from Rampur.
Haji Fazlur Rehman, Malook Nagar and Girish Chandra of the BSP won the Saharanpur, Bijnor and Nagina seats in the last general elections.
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