UP assembly polls: 57.5% turnout recorded in Phase 7

The average voter turnout was recorded at more than 57.53%. This compares to 59.56% in the same region in the assembly elections five years ago. To be sure, polling numbers are finalised by the Election Commission the day after voting, and the figure often rises by a few percentage points.

Voting was held amid tight security in 54 assembly constituencies of nine districts of Purvanchal in the seventh and final phase of Uttar Pradesh assembly polls on Monday.

The average voter turnout was recorded at more than 57.53%.

The average voter turnout was recorded at more than 57.53%. This compares to 59.56% in the same region in the assembly elections five years ago. To be sure, polling numbers are finalised by the Election Commission the day after voting, and the figure often rises by a few percentage points.

Counting will take place, along with that in four other states -- Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur -- on March 10.

Click here for full coverage of UP assembly polls

Chief electoral officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said EC made all arrangements for fair and peaceful polls, and that no untoward incident was reported from anywhere in the final phase.

During Monday’s polling, the fate of 613 candidates, including seven ministers, was sealed. The nine districts were Varanasi (8 seats), Jaunpur (9), Azamgarh (10), Mau (4), Ghazipur (7), Chandauli (4), Mirzapur (5), Sonbhadra (4), and Bhadohi (3).

The state ministers in the fray during this phase included Ravindra Jaiswal, Neelkanth Tiwari and Anil Rajbhar (all Varanasi), Girish Yadav (Jaunpur), Ramashankar Singh Patel (Mirzapur), Sangeeta Balwant (Ghazipur), and Sanjiv Gond (Sonbhadra).

The chief of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), Omprakash Rajbhar -- a key ally of the Samajwadi Party in eastern UP — contested from the Zahoorabad seat in Ghazipur. And gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s son Abbas Ansari contested as the SP-SBSP candidate from Mau.

One of the most-watched candidates in this phase is former minister Om Prakash Rajbhar, who is contesting from the Zahoorabad seat. Rajbhar had won the seat in 2017 as candidate of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, which was a BJP ally.

After a falling out with the BJP over OBC issues, chief minister Yogi Adityanath expelled him from the cabinet in 2019. In the run-up to the 2022 polls, Rajbhar allied with the SP.

Dara Singh Chauhan, who had resigned from the Adityanath cabinet and joined the SP, is contesting from Ghosi in Mau.

“There were a total 2.06 crore voters in the last phase and of them 1.09 crore were male voters, 97.08 lakh women, and 1,027 third gender voters,” Shukla said. “Seventy-five of the 613 candidates in the fray in the final round were women.”

UP has a total of more than 150 million voters across seven phases.

In 2017, BJP won 29 of the 54 seats in the final phase, its ally Apna Dal-S won 4, and then-ally SBSP won 3. The SP won 11 seats, the Bahujan Samaj Party 6, and the Nishad Party one seat.

There were some stray incidents of unrest reported from a few districts, officials said -- in Varanasi, a sub-inspector of central armed police force (CAPF) was removed from polling duty by district magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma after he argued with polling agents and reportedly forced them to throw away a voters’ list; and in Ghazipur, SP and BJP supporters got into heated argument forcing security forces to disperse the crowd.

“The entire poll exercise spreading over seven phases was conducted smoothly and peacefully with no untoward incident having been reported from anywhere in the state,” chief electoral officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said. “Now, we are making necessary arrangements for the counting of votes on March 10,” he added.