Gonda LS seat that gave UP its first female CM will witness contest between BJP’s Kirti Vardhan Singh, SP’s Shreya Verma

Gonda (Uttar Pradesh) [India], May 16 (ANI): Gonda, a Lok Sabha constituency in central Uttar Pradesh neighbouring the religious city of Ayodhya, will witness an electoral contest mainly between BJP candidate Kirti Vardhan Singh alias Raja Bhaiya and Samajwadi Party’s Shreya Verma.

The constituency also witnessed the country’s first female Chief Minister, Sucheta Kriplani contest from the seat in 1967 in which she emerged victorious. In 1963 Kriplani became chief minister of the United Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh), which she ruled until 1967.

The Gonda seat comprises five Assembly segments including Utraula, Mehnaun, Gonda, Mankapur, and Gaura. The constituency is a general category seat.

In 1952, this area had two parliamentary seats. Chaudhary Haider Hussain won the Gonda North seat, while Shakuntala Nayar of the Hindu Mahasabha won the Gonda West seat. In 1957, Dinesh Pratap Singh of Congress won the seat. Talking about politics after 1990, Brijbhushan Sharan Singh of BJP won the seat in 1991. Since then, the BJP has won this seat four times, the SP twice, and the Congress once.

In the 2009 elections, Beni Prasad Verma of Congress won the seat.

The Gonda district, with a population of about 45 lakh, has about 18 lakh voters.

In 2014, the main contest was between BJP’s Kirtivardhan Singh and SPs Nandita Shukla. Kirtivardhan received 359,643 of the total votes, while Nandita Shukla received 199,227 votes. Kirtivardhan won the contest by a margin of 160,416 votes.

In 2019, Kirti Vardhan Singh alias Raja Bhaiya of the BJP won the Gonda constituency, securing 5,08,190 votes. SP’s Vinod Kumar Alias Pandit Singh secured 341,830 votes.

Gonda is a rural constituency with an approximate literacy rate of 58.62%. The voter turnout in 2019 was 52.20 per cent.

Gonda is also native place of BJP’s strong man Brij Bhushan Singh who faces allegations of sexual harassment levelled by several women wrestlers. He remained MP from the seat between 1991 and 1996.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah will address a rally in the constituency today and polling will be held on May 20 in the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls.