The blistering heat during last ten days, however, dampened the spirit of the party workers for organising "big election meetings". The senior party leaders preferred to visit their respective constituencies only "once".

Prominent among those leaders who visited the seven constituencies are Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, BJP state unit president Rajnath Singh, Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) vice-president Mayawati and the Congress leaders including the UPCC chief N D Tewari and Jitendra Prasad. An electorate of over 16 lakh would exercise their franchise on Wednesday to decide the electoral fortunes of 86 candidates who are in the fray for the by-polls. The constituencies going to the polls are Tulsipur, Dildarnagar,Chaubepur, Harora, Nagina, Milipur and Mandiyahu.

While six of the seven seats will have by-elections because the respective MLAs resigned from the post following their election to the Lok Sabha, H K Srivastava, who represented the Chaubeypur seat had vacated the same after he contested the Lok Sabha elections and lost it.

Stakes are high for the SP and the BSP to retain their respective seats while the BJP, though has nothing to "lose or gain", the elections would test the popularity of the Kalyan Singh government and its eight-month regime so far in the State. The Jantantrik, BSP and Loktantrik, Congress, both BJP allies are contesting in two seats.

The Dildarnagar, Milkpur, Mandhiyahu and Nagina seats were won by the SP during the 1996 Assembly elections while BSP won the Tulsipur, Chaubeypur and Harora seats. The ruling BJP could not win a single seat in these constituencies and has thus weak base in all these seats.

Rizwan Zaheer and H K Srivastava of Tulsipur and Chaubeypur constituencies, whohad won the 1996 Assembly elections on a BSP ticket, later resigned from the party and contested the Lok Sabha elections. Therefore, of the seven seats, the Samajwadi Party has stakes in six. Harora, is only seat where BSP has its claim. It was represented by BSP leader and former chief minister Mayawati. Though the Congress has also fielded its candidates in all the seven seats, it is not expected to cut ice as the party has not done anything significant to boost its workers in the field, who are already demoralised due to party's non-performance in the Lok Sabha elections. The local issues and the performance of the BJP government are likely to influence the voters in these elections.

While the BJP claims that its good performance and several welfare programmes initiated by it would be able to woo the electorate, both the SP and BSP hope to retain their seats on the ground that the people in general are not happy with the Kalyan Singh government.