Assembly elections 2022: Samajwadi Party stronghold of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa Vote today: 10 points

In Uttar Pradesh, special focus will be on eight sensitive constituencies across Bijnor, Sambhal and Saharanpur districts. The area – considered a stronghold of the Samajwadi Party – has a large Muslim population.

Goa and Uttarakhand will see a single-stage vote. Forty seats in Goa and 70 seats in Hill State will go to the polls.

Out of 55 seats in Uttar Pradesh, BJP won 38 seats in 2017, Samajwadi Party won 15 and Congress won 2.

Prominent faces competing in this round include Samajwadi Party senior leader Azam Khan, Dharam Singh Saini, BJP Minister turned Samajwadi Party and State Finance Minister Suresh Khanna.

Azam Khan has been taken from his Rampur stronghold and is taking the polls from behind bars. His son, Abdullah Azam, is competing from the Suar seat against Haider Ali Khan. Haider Ali Khan, a member of Rampur’s first royal family, is the grandson of former congressman Noor Bano, who is trying his luck with the ticket of Apna Dal (Sonelal), an ally of BJP. He is the only Muslim candidate announced at UP by the BJP-led coalition so far.

In Uttarakhand, the main candidates include Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and his cabinet colleagues Satpal Maharaj, Subodh Unyal, Arvind Pandey and Dhan Singh Rawat. Prominent faces from the congress include former premier Harish Rawat and state parliamentarian Ganesh Godiyal. Arvind Kejriwal’s Aaam Aadmi Party is also competing in Uttarakhand.

Despite being a small coastal state with only 40 seats, the Goa contest drew the most attention after the UP, with a surprise result in 2017, when Congress won the maximum number of seats, but the BJP government has been established. This time, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress are also competing in hopes of expanding their footprints beyond Delhi and Bengal.

The big fight will take place in Panaji, where Utpal Parrikar, a BJP rebel and son of the late Manohar Parrikar, runs as an Independent against the BJP’s Atanasio Monserrate. The congress selected Elvis Gomes, a former official and AAP ministerial candidate in 2017. AAP selected Valmiki Naik for the third time.

The Trinamool Congress was aggressively recruiting in Goa – its expansion came mainly at the expense of the Congress. However, the election comes amid a growing rift with Mamata Banerjee’s grandson Abhishek Banerjee and the former protégé. Caught in the middle is the IPAC of election strategist Prashant Kishor, the company building the campaign in Goa.

The Aam Aadmi Party, which vacated in Goa’s 2017 election, claims it is well prepared this time. With a history of rapid defections in the state, all 40 AAP candidates signed an oath of allegiance, which can be legally binding on any voter.