2022 Assembly polls: Goa, Uttarakhand and 55 seats in UP set to go to polls tomorrow

Assembly elections in Uttarakhand, Goa and Uttar Pradesh will be held tomorrow as per the schedule announced by the Election Commission.

Uttar Pradesh will witness its second phase of the Assembly elections tomorrow with over two crore people eligible to vote in 55 constituencies across nine districts. While political campaigning for the second phase came to an end on Saturday, security arrangements have been tightened in 17,000 polling booths across the Uttar Pradesh.

The nine districts voting in the second phase are Saharanpur, Bijnor, Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur, Amroha, Budaun, Bareilly and Shahjahanpur. The fate of 586 candidates will be decided in this phase, News18 reported.

Goa

With campaigning for the 40 Assembly seats in Goa concluding on Saturday, the state will go to the polls in a single-phase tomorrow with the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) being challenged by Congress, Trinamool Congress and Aam Admi Party (AAP) in a multi-cornered electoral contest in Goa.

Goa Assembly has a strength of 40 members out of which the BJP currently has 17 legislators and enjoys the support of legislators from Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Vijay Sardesai of the Goa Forward Party (GFP), and three independents. The GFP and MGP each have three MLAs, and Congress, on the other hand, has 15 MLAs in the house.

A total of 301 candidates from different political parties are in the electoral fray in Goa.

The ruling BJP, Congress, Trinamool Congress and Aam Aadmi Party remain principal contenders for the Assembly elections in Goa along with Shiv Sena.

However, Utpal Parrikar, son of former chief minister Manohar Parrikar, is also contesting as an Independent candidate from his father’s traditional Panaji Assembly seat. He had resigned from the BJP after he was denied a ticket from the Panaji Assembly constituency.

The BJP has fielded Congress party turncoat Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate from the Panaji seat. He had joined the BJP along with nine other MLAs in 2019 from Congress.

The Panaji Assembly seat has its own importance in electoral politics of the state. Former Union minister for Defence Manohar Parrikar, who had represented Panaji, had been a three term Chief Minister of the state.

Goa witnessed intense electioneering by the top leaders of various political parties.

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram along with the AICC in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao canvassed in Goa, seeking votes for works carried out by the Congress led governments in the past, slamming political rivals for hampering welfare of the people in the state.

As per ANI, Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Girish Chodankar also posted a video message for voters in Goa. He recalled works done by the Congress led government in the past in the state.

Similarly, several candidates of the BJP, Congress and TMC along with other political parties posted video messages, highlighting the developmental works carried out by them in their respective constituencies.

Meanwhile, AAP national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also promised cash assistance for every woman above the age of 18 years and other benefits for many communities if his party came to power in the state.

Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray on Saturday highlighted that the model of good governance in Maharashtra should be replicated in all other states.

The AAP has declared lawyer turned politician Amit Palekar as its chief ministerial face for the Goa Assembly polls.

Uttarakhand

Having seen 11 Chief Ministers in the last two decades since the formation of Uttarakhand, the hilly state will vote on Monday for its 70-member Assembly. While the incumbent BJP is up against the electoral trend of the people voting out the governments in every elections, Congress is hoping for a comeback, and Aam Admi Party (AAP) has pitched in to find a foothold in a state widely known for political instability.

The voting will begin at 7 am and end at 5 pm after the electioneering came to an end on Saturday, 48 hours before the electorate begin casting their votes. There are 632 candidates in the electoral fray for 70 Assembly seats.

Other than the BJP and Congress, and AAP, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party are also testing their electoral strength in the state.

The AAP has named a retired colonel and candidate from Gangotri seat Ajay Kothiyal as its Chief Ministerial candidate. Former chief minister Harish Rawat led the Congress campaign during the campaigning. The BJP’s star campaigners sought to build the poll plank on the works done by the incumbent Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.

Dhami is contesting from Khatima Assembly seat whereas Rawat is in the fray from the Lalkuwa constituency.

After Uttarakhand was formed by carving out from Uttar Pradesh, the hilly state has given mandates alternatively to the Congress and the BJP, while there also being instability of the governments due to frequent change of Chief Ministers.

With the formation of the government in 2017, the BJP had chosen Trivendra Singh Rawat, MLA from the Doiwala seat, as its Chief Minister, but he was replaced by Tirath Singh Rawat in March 2021. Tirath Singh Rawat A Lok Sabha MP, and before the completion of six months from the date of taking the oath of the office he was also replaced by Pushkar Singh Dhami, a sitting MLA as the chief minister of the state.

On the last day of campaigning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, UP CM Yogi Adityanath and Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra addressed a number of election rallies.

Just a day before the campaigning concluded, Dhami stirred a new row by promising contentious Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the state if the BJP retained power.

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