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Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission (SEC) on Tuesday notified the third phase of panchayat polls to be held in 20 districts on April 26. Over 123 million voters are eligible to cast their votes in the four-phase polling through ballot papers to be held on April 15, 19, 26 and 29 with counting of votes on May 2.
Meanwhile, campaigning for the first phase of polling ended on Tuesday and polling would be held on April 15 from 7 am to 6 pm in 18 districts.
The SEC official here on Tuesday said nomination process for third phase polls in 20 districts would continue for two days, Tuesday and Wednesday, scrutiny of papers would be done on April 16 and last date of withdrawal of papers would be April 18.
Polling for the phase would be held on April 26.
Candidates can file their nominations for the posts of gram pradhans, gram panchayat, kshetra and zila panchayat members. Each voter will cast four votes, one each for gram panchayat member and pradhan, kshetra panchayat member and zila panchayat member.
The nomination papers will be filed between 8 am and 5 pm at all the development block headquarters in the districts on the two days. Strict Covid protocol would be enforced during the nomination process.  
Additional Election Commissioner Ved Prakash Verma said instructions had been issued to all the district magistrates that the crowd of supporters of the candidates coming to the block headquarters should be stopped outside the radius of 200 metre on the nomination day and only the candidate, his election agent, proposer and one more person be allowed to enter the nomination room.
In the third phase, polling will be held in Shamli, Meerut, Moradabad, Pilibhit, Kasganj, Firozabad, Auraiya, Kanpur Dehat, Jalaun, Hamirpur, Fatehpur, Unnao, Amethi, Barabanki, Balrampur, Siddharthnagar, Deoria, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Ballia districts.