12-13 pc turnout till 10 AM in phase-V of UP polls

Lucknow: An estimated 12 to 13 per cent of voters turned out to exercise their franchise till 10 AM during the fifth phase of polling Uttar Pradesh today.

Polling is on for 51 Assembly constituencies spread over 11 districts of the state.
“12-13 per cent polling was witnessed till 10 am,” poll officials said here.

Prominent contestants in this phase include controversial minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati from the ruling Samajwadi Party, who will be facing Amita Singh from Congress and BJP’s Garima Singh in Amethi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Rahul Gandhi.

The districts going to polls in this phase are Balrampur, Gonda, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Bahraich, Shravasti, Basti, Siddharth Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Amethi and Sultanpur.

Due to the death of Samajwadi Party candidate Chandrashekhar Kanaujia in Alapur (Ambedkar Nagar), the EC has announced fresh date of voting in this constituency on March 9.

The ruling SP had won 37 seats out of 52 (total seats in this phase including Alapur) in the 2012 Assembly polls. While BJP and Congress won five seats each, BSP had won 3 and Peace Party 2.

In all, 607 candidates are in the fray in this phase with the maximum of 24 candidates in Amethi and minimum of six each in Kapilvastu and Etwa seats in Siddharth Nagar district.

Over 1.81 crore voters, including over 84 lakh women, will decide the fate of ministers Vinod Kumar Singh alias Pandit Singh from Tarabganj (Gonda), Tej Narain Pandey alias Pawan Pandey from Ayodhya and BSP state president Ram Achal Rajbhar from Akbarpur, among others, in this phase. 

Maximum number of 4,38,106 voters are in Mehdawal (Sant Kabir Nagar), while a minimum of 3,04934 voters are in Tanta (Ambedkarnagar).

A total of 12,555 polling centres and 18,822 polling booths are in this phase.
The turnout in these constituencies in 2012 was 57.09 per cent.

For a free and fair conduct of polls, 1,442 sector magistrates, 180 zonal magistrates and 170 static magistrates have been deployed besides police and general observers.

Gonda is close to Nepal and so are Bahraich, Shravasti, Balrampur and Sidhharth Nagar districts, adjacent to the Terai region in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Central forces are on high alert in these areas to ensure that no mischief monger sneaks into the Indian territory or escapes after committing any crime.

In his speech in Gonda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had referred to the Kanpur train tragedy in which 150 people were killed, saying the accident was due to a “conspiracy” and the perpetrators carried it out “sitting across the border”.