What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
Lucknow: The voter turn out in the first phase of Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls till 6 pm on Thursday was recorded at 60.17 per cent, less than 2017 assembly polls where 63.5 per cent votes were polled, the Election Commission said. However, the final tally would differ as voting details of certain segments where voting continued after the scheduled time was being collated by the Election Commission.
As per poll panel, the highest turnout is reported in Kairana with 75.12 per cent and the lowest in Sahibabd with 45 per cent vote.
Voters in 11 districts have exercised their franchise in the first phase of assembly elections for 58 seats.
Polling started at 7 am and continued till 6 pm in adherence to the Covid-appropriate guidelines issued by the Election Commission.
As many as 623 candidates are in the fray in the first phase and around 2.27 crore voters in this phase.
The first phase witnessed voting in the Jat-dominated western UP region and Doab.
In the first phase polling fates of nine ministers of the incumbent BJP government are being tested. These include Suresh Rana (Thana Bhawan), Kapil Dev Aggarwal (Muzaffar Nagar), Dinesh Khateek (Hastinapur), Atul Garg (Ghaziabad), Anil Sharma (Shikarpur), Sandeep Singh (Atrauli), Shrikant Sharma (Mathura) and GS Dharmesh (Agra Cantt).
Prominent names include that of Pankaj Singh, son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Noida and Baby Rani Maurya, former Uttarakhand governor from Agra Rural.
Out of the 58 seats up for grabs in the first phase of the UP polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had bagged 53 in the previous assembly election in 2017.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), could only stake a claim on two seats each, while the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) was reduced to one seat – Chhaprauli in Baghpat district.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had emerged victorious in all 11 Lok Sabha seats in western UP.
