Assembly Elections 2012 UP Country Tales

Crime doesn't pay – even in elections. Uttar Pradesh, which elected criminal candidates year after year, has finally put its foot down. M Tariq Khan reports. Cleaning the taint

Caste politics endures in UP - if only in reverse. But perhaps its space is shrinking. This time round, the space is taken up by demands - for education, for development, for bijli, sadak, paani, M Hasan reports.

EC tightens security of EVMs after water seepage in Lucknow. Rajesh Kumar Singh reports.

Lakhimpur Kheri district of could well serve as a mini political laboratory for the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Manish Chandra Pandey reports.

Lack of development not only hampers economic growth, but also social structure. A case in point is Pahadpur in Bareilly district. HT reports.

According to a rough estimate, more than 20,000 people in Gautam Budh Nagar District could not participate in the polls as their names were missing on the voters’ list. In Noida alone, about 6,000 residents could not find their names on the list. Saurabh Trivedi reports.

Women in this village have never voted in any election. Manish Chandra Pandey reports.

At a time when women across Uttar Pradesh are surpassing men in casting votes, a village trapped by a glass ceiling of sorts is likely to challenge even the most enthusiastic voter awareness campaigns of the election commission. Manish Chandra Pandey reports.

Call it the politics of matrimony but 'Dadda' (elder brother) Deepanarayan Singh, sitting MLA of Samajwadi Party, is banking on this to help see him through the caste cauldron against his Congress and BJP rivals in the assembly polls in Garotha.

When the 'evergreen voters' - who voted in the first state assembly elections in 1952 - moved out once again to cast their votes, their enthusiasm belied their age. Richa Srivastava reports.

The country's carpet capital, Bhadohi, is itching to give politicians a dust off, and boycott is not too far off some lips. Pawan Dixit reports.

The poll battle in the Mariyahu assembly constituency of Jaunpur, 250 km from Lucknow, has a Bollywoodish plot. HT reports.

Inflow of money through flight of men; concrete houses, but no electricity; and an abundance of sugarcane, but no government sugar mills are the threads binding most areas of Basti in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The warmth with which Maulana Arif, principal of Madarsa Darul-Uloom Masoodia Misbahiya Khasihari Masjid in Bahraich city, opened the door of his institute for a woman journalist speaks volumes for the changes that have come in. Sunita Aron reports.