LAKHIMPUR KHERI: Voting has commenced in the Gola Gokarannath Assembly constituency, which is seeing a direct fight between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP).

The major race is between Vinay Tiwari, a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, and Aman Giri, a candidate for the BJP and the son of Arvind Giri.

The fate of the seven candidates will be decided by more than 3.9 lakh votes.

This time, the BSP and Congress are staying away from the bypoll.

The bypoll has become necessary after BJP MLA Arvind Giri died on September 6. Despite a clear outpouring of support for Giri in the wake of his father's passing, the BJP did not take any chances and assigned 40 top campaigners, including all important Cabinet Ministers and party office-bearers, to the campaign, which was overseen by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Gola Gokarannath resides in the Kheri parliamentary district, which belongs to Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni. Following the suspected murder of four farmers in October, in which his son is one of the accused, Mishra has been in the eye of a storm.

Naresh Uttam Patel, the head of the state SP unit, led the campaign with help from Ravi Prakash Verma, the national general secretary, past ministers, and other officeholders. To win over the electorate, the SP leaders went door-to-door and attended public gatherings. Akhilesh Yadav, the party's leader, did not run for office.

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