Barabanki Lok Sabha constituency: Candidates for 2019 LS poll, past results, all updates

Barabanki Lok Sabha constituency, one of the 80 in Uttar Pradesh, will go to polls in the fifth phase of general elections on May 6. The seat is currently held by BJP's Priyanka Singh Rawat who won the 2014 election by defeating Congress leader PL Punia by 2.1 lakh votes. 

This time, however, the BJP has dropped its sitting MP and has fielded a new candidate- Upendra Singh. 

In 2009, Punia won the seat to become first Congress candidate to win the seat since 1984. Before him, Kamla Prasad Rawat of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a former Congress leader, won from here in 2004. Ram Sagar Rawat, a veteran socialist leader, has represented the seat four times in the Lok Sabha - once on a Janata Dal ticket and thrice on Samajwadi Party. 

The seat is reserved for candidates belonging to scheduled castes. 

This time, Punia has fielded his son Tanuj from Barabanki against SP Ram Sagar Rawat, who also has the BSP's support as alliance's joint candidate and the BJP’s Upendra Singh. 

The path to success for Singh is not easy as his party has won from here only twice - once in 1998 and again in 2014. He is up against veteran Ram Sagar Rawat, who as the Mahagathbandhan candidate hopes to consolidate Muslim-Yadav-Dalit votes in the seat close to the state capital of Lucknow. 

Tanuj Punia, making his political debut, is seeking votes in the name of his father who is now one of the closest aides of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi. 

Barabanki Lok Sabha constituency comprises five assembly segments: Kursi, Ramnagar, Barabanki, Zaidpur (SC) and Haidergarh (SC).

UP is facing a three-pronged battle between the BJP, the Congress and BSP-SP-RLD alliance. Under the alliance's seat-sharing formula, the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is contesting on 38 Lok Sabha seats of the total 80 seats, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party on 37 seats and the Chaudhary Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on three seats. The alliance has left two for Congress' Sonia Gandhi (Raebareli) and Rahul Gandhi (Amethi). 

Fifth phase polls in UP 

The polling for 14 Lok Sabha seats in UP will be held in the fifth phase on May. The parliamentary constituencies going to polls in fifth phase are Dhaurahra, Sitapur, Mohanlalganj (SC), Lucknow, Raebareli, Amethi, Banda, Fatehpur, Kaushambi, Barabanki (SC), Ayodhya (earlier known as Faizabad), Bahraich (SC), Kaisarganj and Gonda. 

In 2014, the BJP won 12 of these 14 seats in the state. Only Amethi and Raebareli, traditional bastions of the Congress, were won by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi respectively.

There are 2.47 crore voters in the 14 parliamentary constituencies. This includes 1.32 crore male voters and 1.14 crore female voters. The count of voters in the age bracket of 18-19 years is 3.39 lakh, while the number of voters aged 80 years is 4.84 lakh.

The number of voting centres is 16,126; while there are as many as 28,702 polling booths.

The counting of votes of the Lok Sabha election 2019 will be conducted on May 23.