UP Election 2022: 54% turnout till 5 pm, highest polling in Ambedkar Nagar; fate of heavyweights hangs in balance

Voting for the sixth round of Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls ended at 6 pm on Thursday. The the state witnessed a voter turnout of 53.83 per cent till 5 pm, according to the Election Commission. This phase witnessed 676 candidates fight it out for 57 seats spread across 10 districts. This phase is also set to decide the fate of political heavyweights such as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Congress’ Ajay Kumar Lallu and Samajwadi Party’s Swami Prasad Maurya. According to the EC, Ambedkar Nagar saw the highest voter turnout with almost 61.02 per cent followed by Maharajganj (57.77), Kushinagar (55.01), Basti (54.79), Sant Kabir Nagar (54.39), Gorakhpur (53.86), Balia (51.74), Deoria (51.73), Siddharthnagar (49.83) and the lowest number of votes polled was in Balrampur at 48.64 per cent. Campaign for seventh phase While polling for the sixth phase continued on the one hand, campaigning for the seventh phase continued. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held rallies in Jaunpur and Chandauli; Home Minister Amit Shah at Azamgarh, Adityanath at Ghazipur and Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi at Sonbhadra. On the day West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee also campaigned in Varanasi for the Samajwadi Party. During the rallies, Modi continued with his attack on ‘pariwaad’ and mafia-rule. He said, ‘The dynasts can never fulfil the dreams of the poor,” as they run the government to loot the state. Speaking on the similar vein, Shah said ‘the mafia serving time in jail will be released if the Samajwadi Party comes to power in Uttar Pradesh.’ Priyanka Gandhi, meanwhile, kept up her rhetoric on lack of jobs and vote-bank politics. She said, “Politicians understand that by keeping the youth unemployed, they can be misguided and made to promote violent political ideology… the BJP government did not provide jobs to people in the last five years.” The seventh and the last phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are due to be held on 7 March and the results will be declared on 10 March. The state BJP has called for preparatory party meeting on 7 March, ahead of the counting of votes. State election in-charge Union Minister Prahlad Joshi will attend the meeting. All MPs, state officials, district presidents, candidates and in-charges have been invited. Security up Over 1.5 lakh security personnel were deployed in this phase, where 2.1 crore people were eligible to vote, according to police. Voting was held at 13,930 polling stations and 25,319 polling booths under 179 police station areas. Nine Assembly constituencies – Gorakhpur City, Bansi, Etawah, Dumariaganj, Ballia Nagar, Phephna Bairia, Sikanderpur and Bansdih – were marked as sensitive. Additional Chief Electoral Officer (ACEO) BDR Tiwari said polling was peaceful in the state. Heavyweights Among the candidates in the fray, Adityanath from Gorakhpur Urban fought his first Assembly polls, state Congress president Lallu was fielded from Tamkuhi Raj seat and Swami Prasad Maurya, who quit as BJP minister to join the Samajwadi Party, from Fazilnagar. The Samajwadi Party had pitted the wife of late Upendra Dutt Shukla, a former BJP leader, against Adityanath. Azad Samaj Party founder Chandrashekhar Azad also contested against the chief minister. Leader of Opposition in the outgoing Assembly and Samajwadi Party leader Ram Govind Chaudhary contestested from Bansdih. Many incumbent ministers including Surya Pratap Shahi from Pathardeva seat, Satish Chandra Dwivedi from Itwa, Jai Pratap Singh from Bansi, Shree Ram Chauhan from Khajani, Jai Prakash Nishad from Rudrapur and Surendra Singh from Bairia in Ballia were also in the fray. Criminal cases According to a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), 23 per cent of the 670 candidates contesting in the sixth phase have serious criminal cases such as rape and murder against them. Nearly 29 from Samajwadi Party, 20 each from BJP and Congress, 18 from BSP and five from AAP have declared serious criminal cases against themselves. Also, 37 of the 57 constituencies are Red alert constituencies with three or more candidates having declared criminal cases against themselves. According to the report, two candidates face rape charges, eight are involved in murder cases and 23 face attempt to murder charges, according to CNN-News18. Past results These 57 Assembly segments spread across 10 districts, of which 11 are reserved, are crucial for the BJP. In the 2017 assembly polls, it had won 46 of these seats. Click here to know more about Assembly Elections 2022 Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.