UP elections: Strengthen democracy by casting your vote: PM Modi tells voters

New Delhi, Feb 23: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday requested the voters to contribute to strengthening democracy through their valuable votes as Uttar Pradesh went for the fourth phase of assembly elections.

The voting for 59 Assembly constituencies started at 7 am in nine districts in Uttar Pradesh. "Today is the fourth round of voting in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections. I request all the voters to contribute in strengthening democracy by casting their valuable votes," Modi said in a tweet in Hindi.

This is the fourth phase of the Assembly polls in the state, where elections are to be held in seven rounds. As many as 624 candidates are in the fray in this phase. 59 Assembly seats are spread across the districts of Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sitapur, Hardoi, Unnao, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Banda, and Fatehpur.

2.3 crore people -- 1.14 crore men and 99.3 lakh women - in these nine districts are eligible to vote, for whom 24,643 polling booths and 13,817 poling centres have been set up for casting of ballots, as per the Election Commission.

The state is witnessing a multi-cornered contest with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Congress as principal contenders.

In the 2017 elections, the BJP had won 51, four had gone to the Samajwadi Party, and three to the Bahujan Samaj Party. The BJP's ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) had bagged one seat. Lakhimpur, which had hogged national news headlines after eight people, including four farmers, were killed in violence on October 3 will go to the polls in the fourth phase.