Polling for the first phase of Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh ended at 6 pm on Thursday, with the state recording a voting turnout of 60.71 percent.
The districts which recorded the highest voter turnout were Shamli with 66.14 percent, followed by Muzaffarnagar and Mathura at 65.32 percent 62.90 percent respectively.Gautam Buddha Nagar reported only 54.38 percent voter turnout till 7:55 pm.Other districts with low voter turnout are Ghaziabad, Meerut, Agra with 52.43 percent, 60 percent and 60.23 percent respectively.
As many as 623 candidates were in the fray and around 2.27 crore people were eligible to vote in this phase in which a total of 58 constituencies spread across 11 districts in the western belt of the state went to polls.
Even as the overall voting process remained peaceful, there were reports of a technical error in EVMs at a few places. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav urged the Election Commission to take immediate action wherever there were allegations of EVM glitch or slow polling in the first phase of elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Today morning, Akhilesh Yadav tweeted, “New UP’s new slogan: Let development be the ideology!”
The Samajwadi Party, via a tweet, alleged that voters belonging to the poor class are being intimidated and sent away from polling booths in Kairana in UP’s Shamli district as polling was underway.
Many of the UP seats, which went to polls today, are Jat dominated who had participated actively in the historic agitation against the Union’s three contentious agriculture laws in the national capital last year.
“There is a wave in favour of the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. People are voting in favour of the BJP government. The feedback and reports collected from ground clearly indicate that the BJP will easily win more than 50 seats of 58 in the first phase,” Uttar Pradesh BJP spokesperson Harish Chandra Srivastava said to reporters.
