E-Paper
Over 98% voter turnout in biennial elections to 27 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council seats
The counting of votes for all the 27 seats will be held simultaneously on April 12 from 8am onwards, a spokesman for the chief electoral officer said.
An average voter turnout of 98.11% was recorded in the biennial elections to the 27 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad) seats under the local authorities’ constituencies for which polling was held amid tight security in 58 districts on Saturday, a spokesman for the chief electoral officer said here.
The voting was peaceful and fair with no untoward incidents having been reported from anywhere, the spokesman added.
The voting was conducted from 8am to 4pm. Ninety-five candidates were in the fray.
“The counting of votes for all the 27 seats will be held simultaneously on April 12 from 8am onwards,” the spokesman said.
The biennial polls were initially meant to fill 36 seats but nine candidates (all of the BJP) were declared elected unopposed before the voting.
There were a total of eligible 1,20,657 voters. Those who exercised their franchise at 739 polling booths included village pradhans, members and chairpersons of the kshetra and zila panchayats, corporators/nagar palika members, apart from MLAs and MPs.
Rae Bareli recorded the highest voting at 99.35% followed by Pratapgarh (99.25%) and Sitapur (99.20%).
The election commission made elaborate security arrangements, the spokesman said.
The commission deployed 293 zonal magistrates, 451 sector magistrates and 597 static magistrates, besides one observer each in all the constituencies, he said. He further said 3699 polling staff were deployed to conduct the polls. A total of1668 light motor vehicles and 235 heavy vehicles were used to transport poll personnel and other logistics.
In the 100-member Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, the BJP currently has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party four. The Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD party have one member each in the House. The Teachers’ group has two MLCs, while the Independent group (’Nirdal Samooh’) and Independents have one MLC each.
The BJP, which won a second successive term in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, sees these MLC polls as an opportunity to get a majority in the Upper House too. The SP was in a dominant position in the Vidhan Parishad for years though its numbers have gradually dwindled.
The 27 seats for which voting was held on Saturday include Moradabad-Bijnor, Rampur-Bareilly, Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Sitapur, Lucknow-Unnao, Raebareli, Pratapgarh and Sultanpur.
The seats also include Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Bast-Siddhartnagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Deoria, Azamgarh-Mau and Ballia. Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur, Etawah-Farrukhabad, Agra-Firozabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur, too, are among the seats.
The eight constituencies from where nine candidates were elected unopposed include
Badaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr, Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri. Two candidates were elected unopposed from the Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri constituency while one each was elected from the seven others.
