Uttar Pradesh's 75 Districts and Its Five Political Regions

Uttar Pradesh's 403 assembly constituencies are spread across 75 districts — the most of any Indian state. For election analysis, these districts are commonly grouped into broader political regions that share economic, demographic, and voting characteristics. IndiaStats.org groups Uttar Pradesh into five such regions: Western UP, Central UP, Eastern UP, Terai, and Bundelkhand.

The Five Regions by Seat Count

• Eastern UP (often called Purvanchal): 175 seats — the largest region
• Western UP: 111 seats
• Central UP (broadly overlapping with the traditional Awadh region): 60 seats
• Terai: 38 seats
• Bundelkhand: 19 seats

Eastern UP / Purvanchal

Eastern Uttar Pradesh — widely referred to in political commentary as Purvanchal — is the state's largest region by seat count, spanning 28 districts including Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Ayodhya and Prayagraj. It is also Uttar Pradesh's most politically consequential region simply by scale: no party can form a government without a strong showing here. In 2022, BJP won 94 of its 175 seats to SP's 62 — the closest regional margin between the two parties anywhere in the state.

Western UP

Western Uttar Pradesh, spanning 21 districts including Meerut, Ghaziabad, Agra, Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar, is the state's second-largest region at 111 seats. It has a distinct agrarian and sugarcane-belt economy, a significant Jat population in its northern districts, and a long RLD presence dating back decades. In 2022, RLD — allied with SP — won all 8 of its statewide seats from this region.

Central UP / Awadh

Central Uttar Pradesh, covering 12 districts including Lucknow, Kanpur Nagar and Aligarh, broadly overlaps with the historic Awadh region associated with Lucknow and its surrounding districts. It has been one of BJP's most consistent strongholds across all three elections — the party won 46 of its 60 seats in 2012's SP-wave year, rising to 50 in 2017 and holding at 46 in 2022.

Terai

The Terai belt runs along Uttar Pradesh's northern border with Nepal, covering seven districts including Bahraich, Balrampur and Lakhimpur Kheri — 38 seats in total. It has consistently leaned toward BJP across all three elections, most recently 27 of 38 seats in 2022.

Bundelkhand

Bundelkhand, in the state's southwest, is its smallest region at 19 seats across seven districts including Jhansi, Banda and Chitrakoot. Historically drought-prone and economically underdeveloped relative to the rest of the state, it swung from a fragmented multi-party result in 2012 to a clean BJP sweep of all 19 seats in 2017, before settling at 14 of 19 for BJP in 2022.

District Counts by Region

• Eastern UP / Purvanchal: 28 districts
• Western UP: 21 districts
• Central UP / Awadh: 12 districts
• Terai: 7 districts
• Bundelkhand: 7 districts

These regional boundaries are not official administrative divisions — Uttar Pradesh's formal units are its 75 districts and, above them, a smaller number of administrative divisions. The five-region grouping used here reflects how the state is commonly discussed in political analysis, grouping districts by shared economic geography, dominant caste demographics, and historical voting patterns rather than by administrative boundary alone.

Why Regional Data Matters

Because Uttar Pradesh is so large — 403 seats across 75 districts and more than 15 crore voters — statewide seat totals alone can obscure very different regional stories. A party can win comfortably at the state level while losing ground in a specific region, or vice versa. IndiaStats.org's district and constituency pages let readers drill into any of the 75 districts individually to see how that pattern plays out on the ground.