Millions vote in Uttar Pradesh

Millions voted on Monday in 51 assembly constituencies in the fifth phase of staggered elections in Uttar Pradesh, officials said.

An estimated 49.1 per cent of the 1.8 crore electorate had voted between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m., the Election Commission said.

After a slow start, voting picked up massively all across the 11 districts including Amethi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi.

BJP's first timer Garima Singh is pitted against Gayatri Prajapati of the ruling Samajwadi Party and Congress' Ameeta Singh in Amethi besides 21 other candidates.

It is one of those constituencies where the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance hasn't worked.

Hundreds of thousands had also voted in Basti, Ambedkarnagar, Sultanpur, Bahraich, Faizabad, Sant Kabir Nagar, Balrampur, Siddharthnagar, Shravasti and Gonda, officials said.

Voting is on in 18,822 polling booths to decide the fate of 607 candidates. Amethi has the maximum number of 24 candidates.

Election has been cancelled in Alapur in Ambedkarnagar district following the death of the Samajwadi Party candidate.

In 2012, the Samajwadi Party won 36 of the 51 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress five each, the BSP three and the Peace Party two.

A total of 262 of the 403 assembly constituencies voted in the first four rounds of the elections which began on February 11. The last two rounds of voting will take place on March 4 and 8.

The results of the elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa and Punjab will be known on March 11.