Ajmer: Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and other equipment at a distribution center on the eve of the second phase of general elections, in Ajmer, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Photo: PTI)
The stage is set for a triangular battle in eight Lok Sabha constituencies of Uttar Pradesh, which will go to polls in the second phase on Friday.
Spread over seven phases, the first phase of elections held last Friday for 102 seats in 21 states and Union Territories saw a voter turnout of around 65.5 per cent.
The campaign for the second phase ended on Wednesday evening with the leaders of all major political parties sweeping the constituencies and rallying support for their candidates.
The eight constituencies of Uttar Pradesh where voting will take place on Friday are Amroha, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Bulandshahr, Aligarh and Mathura.
Prominent among the total 91 candidates whose future will be decided in the second phase are actor-turned-politician Hema Malini, who is seeking a third term from Mathura; and Arun Govil, who played the role of Lord Rama in the famous TV series Ramayan. He has been arrested by the saffron party from his native Meerut.
Congress’s Danish Ali from Amroha, BJP’s Atul Garg from Ghaziabad and Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Buddha Nagar toured their constituencies seeking popular support.
In total, Uttar Pradesh has 80 parliamentary constituencies and the elections will take place in all seven phases of the Lok Sabha elections.
With the NDA, the INDIA bloc and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fielding their candidates, a triangular battle is looming.
The BJP’s campaign for the second phase was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
For the Samajwadi Party (SP), its president Akhilesh Yadav led the campaign while Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, BSP president Mayawati and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Singh were on a hectic campaign trail in these constituencies in the past few days.
The tone for the campaign was set by the Prime Minister on Monday at an election rally in Aligarh, a constituency with a sizeable Muslim population, where he accused the Congress of planning to redistribute the people’s property if voted to power. that the wealth would go to Muslims.
Modi accused the opposition, the Congress and the SP, of following a policy of appeasement and yet doing nothing to improve the socio-economic condition of the community.
Lashing out at the BJP, Yadav said, “Speaking wrong about a particular community by naming it is an insult to that community spread all over the world.”
Mayawati, in a poll in Bulandshahr the same day, accused the BJP of taking credit for the development of the Noida region and Greater Noida by the BSP while it was in power in the state.
The stakes are high for the ruling BJP as out of eight constituencies that went to polls, it had won seven seats in the 2019 elections, while the BSP had bagged Amroha.
There are 16.7 million voters in these eight Lok Sabha constituencies, of which 9.011 million are male voters, 7.738 million are female voters and 787 are of the third gender.
There are a total of 7,797 polling stations and 17,677 polling booths in these constituencies.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: April 25, 2024 | 11:04 am IST