61 per cent voter turnout in LAST phase of UP polls

The seventh and final round of the Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections on Saturday witnessed the highest ever turnout of 61 per cent.
 
"Today's poll in 60 assembly constituencies, spread across ten districts of the state crossed all past records, taking the turnout to 61 per cent," Chief Electoral Officer Umesh Sinha said at the end of the month-long seven-phased election in the country's most populous state.
 
"The highest turnout of 65 per cent was recorded in Jyotiba Phule Nagar, followed by 62 per cent in Bijnore, while it remained between 59-60 per cent in the remaining eight districts," he said.

"Budaun recorded the lowest turnout of 58 per cent," he added.

Talking about the "incident-free" election, Sinha said, "The efforts put in by our entire team must be appreciated as the giant exercise could not have been accomplished without their contribution".

"It is most praiseworthy that the entire election passed off without a single incident of violence," Sinha emphasised.

Reportage: Sharat Pradhan

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Significantly, this phase had witnessed 50.9 per cent turnout during the last state assembly election in 2007, which dipped to 47.7 per cent at the Lok Sabha poll in 2009.

The ruling BSP had bagged 27 seats in 2007, SP got 17 seats, BJP got 9 and the Congress could manage only two seats.

As many as 1.82 crore voters will decide the political destiny of 962 candidates in 10 districts of Barielly, Moradabad, Rampur, Shahjahanpur, Lakhimpur-Kheri, Budaun, Pilibhit, Jyotiba Phule Nagar, Bijnore and Bheem Nagar.

While this part of the state was initially scheduled to go to polls in the first phase, the Election Commission changed the dates because of the festival of Barawafat, which was clashing with the original date.
 
The Election Commission had set up 18,957 polling stations with 27,589 electronic voting machines. More than 1,00,000 policemen were deployed on duty, besides an equal number of home guards. Special security arrangements were made at 3,388 sensitive or hyper-sensitive polling stations.

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Today's  poll process involved as many as 86,000 state government employees, including 1,571 sector magistrates and 187 zonal magistrates .

Of the 962 candidates, only 182 belonged to national parties, while as many as 70 were from m regional political outfits. The remaining candidates were either from registered political parties or independents.
 
Several key leaders of different political parties were in the fray including Azam Khan, Samajwadi Party's general secretary and its most visible Muslim leader. His electoral battle was against traditional Congress rival Noor Banu and filmstar-turned-Member of Parliament Jaya Prada.

Jaya Prada, along with her mentor and ousted SP leader Amar Singh, fielded a small- time local politician against Khan under the aegis of their Lok Manch.

But their vitriolic against the SP leader was a matter of concern for Azam Khan.
 
Also in the fray was dreaded mafia-don-turned-politician D-P Yadav, who floated his own outfit to contest the polls from Budaun, after he was denied entry in the SP.

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