Lucknow: Forty-two candidates from different political parties including Union minister Sanjeev Kumar Balyan on Tuesday filed their nomination papers in Uttar Pradesh for the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections, Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said.

Rinwa said so far 46 candidates from different political parties have filed their nomination papers.

From the Saharanpur Lok Sabha seat, four candidates including Imran Masood of the Congress and BSP’s Majid Ali filed their nominations.

In Kairana constituency, seven candidates including Iqra Chaudhary of the Samajwadi Party, SP’s “supplementary” candidate Nahid Hasan and BSP’s Shripal filed their nomination papers.

From Muzaffarnagar seat, 11 candidates filed their nomination papers. Prominent among them are Union minister and BJP’s candidate Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, SP’s Harendra Malik and BSP’s Dara Singh Prajapati.

In Bijnor, four candidates including Vijendra Singh of the BSP filed the nomination papers.

Five candidates have so far filed the nomination papers from Nagina (SC) Lok Sabha seat, with three of them filing their nominations on Tuesday.

Five candidates from Moradabad including BJP’s Sarvesh Kumar Singh and sitting MP ST Hasan of the SP filed their nominations, taking the total count in the parliamentary constituency to six.

From the Rampur seat, five candidates filed their nomination papers on Tuesday.

Three candidates including Bhagwat Sharan Gangwar of the SP and BSP’s Anis Ahmad (Phool Babu) were among the three candidates from Pilibhit who filed their nomination papers on Tuesday. So far, four candidates have filed their nomination papers from the seat.

Chief Electoral Officer Rinwa said adequate security measures were in place for the submission of the nominations and that the entire process was videographed.

According to the Election Commission, the notification for the first-phase polls was issued on March 20 and March 27 is the last date for filing of nominations.

Scrutiny of nominations will be done on March 28 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 30.

This time, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has announced it would contest the elections alone, while the SP and the Congress — both members of the opposition INDIA bloc, are fighting the polls in alliance.

The Rashtriya Lok Dal has joined hands with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, of the 80 seats in the state, the BJP won 62 and its ally Apna Dal(S) two seats, decimating the SP-BSP alliance. The Congress won the lone Raebareli seat from where Sonia Gandhi was elected.

The Mayawati-led party was the biggest gainer in the SP-BSP alliance as it won 10 seats. Akhilesh Yadav’s SP won five seats and the RLD could not open its account.

Of the eight Lok Sabha seats going to polls in the first phase, the BJP had won the Muzaffarnagar (Sanjeev Kumar Balyan), Kairana (Pradeep Kumar Chaudhary) and the Pilibhit (Varun Gandhi) constituencies in 2019.

The SP’s ST Hasan won the Moradabad seat, while Azam Khan emerged victorious from Rampur.

Haji Fazlur Rehman, Malook Nagar and Girish Chandra of the BSP won the Saharanpur, Bijnor and Nagina (SC) seats in the last general elections.