New Delhi: The first phase of polling in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections shall witness voting in eight Lok Sabha seats of western Uttar Pradesh today. The voting is taking place amidst tight security in the first leg of the seven-phased general elections.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making all-out efforts to retain all the eight Lok Sabha seats while the fledgling Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance too is going whole hog to upset the saffron party's apple cart.

In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the BJP had won all the eight seats-- Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddh Nagar that figure in the first phase of the staggered elections.

The communally sensitive seat of Muzaffarnagar will see a clash of titans with RLD chief Ajit Singh locking horns with sitting BJP lawmaker Sanjeev Balyan.

For the saffron party, the Kairana parliamentary constituency holds immense significance as it had tasted defeat in the Lok Sabha bye-election last year.