Low voter turnout in UP

The state recorded a low voter turnout of about 45 pc in the second round of polling to 30 LS seats. In Lucknow polling remained as low as 43 per cent.

Uttar Pradesh recorded a low voter turnout of about 45 per cent in the second round of polling Wednesday to 30 Lok Sabha seats.

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Polling in Lucknow, from where Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee contested, remained as low as 43 per cent - the lowest recorded here.

"The highest turnout among the 30 constituencies that went to poll Wednesday was recorded in Jhansi with 58 per cent as against the lowest of 38 per cent in Chail," said state Chief Election Officer Vijay Sharma.

In Allahabad, where Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi was in the fray, polling remained as low as 40 percent, while in Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's Mainpuri constituency, it was 48 percent.

However, there were no reports of any untoward incident.

Sharma admitted that with less than 20 million of the 40 million electorate voting, the turnout would be rated "low", but could not assign any reason for it.

"There is no apparent reason for the low turnout as even the weather was not as hot as it normally is at this time of the year," he said.

Replying to questions, Sharma confessed that people faced some problems in Lucknow over some faults in the voters' list. He blamed it on errors in feeding the names in the computer software.

The second round of poling began at 7 a.m. in 102,000 polling stations for 30 seats, spread over 25 districts in central and southern Uttar Pradesh.

Security was tight, with 190,000 security personnel being deployed. Of the 1,138 candidates contesting from the state, 432 were in the fray Wednesday.

Lucknow, with 32, fielded the most numbers of candidates in the state.