UP Polls: Lakhimpur Kheri in eye of storm over farmers' deaths goes to poll on Wednesday

Lakhimpur Kheri (Uttar Pradesh) [India], February 21 (ANI): Lakhimpur Kheri, which caught national attention in October last year for the alleged killing of the farmers, will go to the polls on February 23 in the ongoing Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Bharatiya Janata Party's Yogesh Verma had won the Lakhimpur seat in the 2017 Assembly polls by defeating Samajwadi Party's Utkarsh Verma Madhur with a formidable margin of more than 37,000 votes. The prestige of the Union Minister of State for the Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni will also be at stake in the Lakhimpur Kheri constituency. He's a local MP, besides having been at the centre of controversy after his son was named in the FIR in the incident leading to the deaths of the farmers.
Interestingly, both the BJP and the SP have repeated their candidates. The constituency caught the eyeballs in the ongoing polls because of the political heat generated by the Lakhimpur Kheri violence in the Parliament and also outside.
In 2012, Utkarsh Verma Madhur from the SP had won the seat defeating the Bahujan Samajwadi Party's Gyan Prakash Bajpai.
Congress has fielded Ravi Shankar Trivedi whereas the BSP has fielded Mohan Bajpai from the seat. Khushi Kinnar from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is also in the fray along with AIMIM's Mohammad Usman Siddiqui.
Eight Assembly constituencies in the Kheri Lok Sabha seat are Mohammadi, Gola Gokarannath, Kasta, Lakhimpur, Srinagar, Nighasan, Dhaurahara, and Palia Kalan. A total of 28,02,835 will cast their vote out of which there are 1495069 male voters and 1307623 female voters. As many as 42,911 first-time voters have been added to the list of voters in the constituency. The BJP had swept all the seats in the district in 2017.
On October 3, eight people, including four protesting farmers, died after allegedly being mowed down by an SUV belonging to Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni's son Ashish Mishra. A local journalist was also killed in the violence.
The incident hit national and international dailies. Ashish Mishra was arrested and was in jail. Allahabad High Court recently granted bail to Ashish Mishra in Lakhimpur Kheri violence.
Since the 1977 election, the SP has won the polls here four times whereas the BJP has won thrice.
The counting of votes of the seven-phased UP Assembly polls will take place on March 10. (ANI)