E-Paper
People voted for SP overwhelmingly in U.P. civic polls, claims party
Samajwadi Party alleges BJP may resort to an 'evil conspiracy' during counting for urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh to affect poll outcome.
Claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s defeat in the urban local body (ULB) polls was imminent, the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Friday alleged that the ruling party might take recourse to what it termed ‘evil conspiracy’ during counting to affect poll outcome.
Manoj Pandey, the SP MLA and party’s chief whip in the state assembly, and SP state unit chief Naresh Uttam Patel said so in a joint press conference here. The counting of the votes polled for ULB polls held in two phases on May 4 and 11 will take place on Saturday (May 13).
“The counting of votes must follow the original rules giving regular updates to candidates after every two hours during the counting instead of following the new rule of tabulating the votes and only making the final result announcement,” Manoj Pandey demanded.
He claimed that influenced by SP national president Akhilesh Yadav and the party’s policies, people overwhelmingly voted for the SP and against the BJP. “Unnerved by the imminent defeat, the ruling BJP has been engaging in evil conspiracies to affect the poll outcome,” Pandey alleged. Naresh Uttam Patel termed the ULB polls the biggest in the country and claimed that in this poll public opinion was evidently against the ruling BJP.
“The BJP engaged in betraying people. When it (BJP) saw the clear wave in favour of the SP in the first phase, it started extensively engaging in the misuse of power and malpractices using the government, administrative, and police machinery. The BJP caused low voter turnout in the second phase to save itself from defeat,” Patel alleged.
Manoj Pandey said now that the polls were over, the BJP was attempting to influence the counting. “Under the local bodies poll rules, the counting has to be done round wise and at the end of each round there is a system of writing (on a black board) the number of valid, invalid, and total votes a candidate gets at the end of each round and the same has to be announced through a public address system. But on April 15, 2023, a new amendment was issued according to which all the votes will be tabulated and then straightway final result will be announced,” he said.
Pandey claimed that the amended rules cannot overrule the original rules of the local body polls. “The new rules raise suspicion that the BJP government will play with the public mandate,” he alleged. He also claimed that the new rules were not only impractical but also opaque.
Pandey further alleged that during the polls, the BJP orchestrated slow pace of voting, intimidating and terrorising voters through misuse of police. He also alleged that many voters were forced to stay indoors and many were beaten up.
