Lucknow, Mar 4 (IANS): Hundreds of thousands of people from Kushinagar and Mau districts in Uttar Pradesh cast their votes in the first four hours of the penultimate sixth phase of the assembly elections, polling 30 and 27 per cent respectively, an Election Commission official said.

Till 11 a.m., 25 per cent voting was reported from Ballia, 23 per cent from Maharajganj and Deoria, and 22 per cent from Gorakhpur.

Azamgarh, the Lok Sabha constituency of Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav recorded the lowest turnout of 21 per cent. The SP patriarch did not campaign in this constituency.

Meanwhile the second highest turnout of voters were seen in Mau where mafia don turned politician Mukhtaar Ansari was fielded by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

Over 1.72 crore voters from 49 constituencies will decide the fate of 635 candidates, of whom 175 are fighting independently.

There are several interesting contests in the phase as Swamy Prasad Maurya of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Surya Pratap Shahi, BJP, Shyam Bahadur Yadav, SP and others battle it out.

While Maurya is contesting from Padrauna, former state Bharatiya Janata Party chief Surya Pratap Shahi is fighting from Pathardeva.

Maximum number of candidates are in Gorakhpur city where 127 candidates are in fray for its nine seats, while the minimum number of candidates - seven - are in Mohammadabad Gohna seat in Mau.