Poll violence drastically down in 2022 compared to 2017 in UP: Police

Uttar Pradesh has registered a sharp decline in the cases of poll violence during the just-concluded assembly elections compared to the one held in 2017, police said on Tuesday.

The state witnessed only 33 cases of violence during the seven-phase state assembly elections compared to 97 in 2017, the police said in a statement amid the preparation for the counting of the votes on March 10.

The voting for the 403 UP assembly constituencies were held over seven phases from February 10 and the elections were secured by the police personnel along with Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), police said.

Over 70,000 UP police personnel and 250 companies of CAPFs will be deployed for security duty during the counting for all seven phases on Thursday, the police said in a statement.

If we look at the violent incidents during the elections in the previous assembly elections, then in 2017, 97 electoral incidents of violence took place. Of those, 75 incidents happened before the polling days and 22 on the days of voting. No casualty was reported then, the UP police said.

In the assembly elections of 2022, a total of 33 incidents of electoral violence took place. Of these 28 incidents happened before polling days and five happened on polling days in which no person was seriously injured or died, the police said.

The police said a total of 250 CAPF companies have been provided to all the districts and commissionerates for March 10 duty.

According to officials, a CAPF company usually has around 70-80 personnel.

Out of these, 36 companies have been earmarked for EVM security and 214 for counting and law and order duty. Besides the CAPFs, 61 companies of PAC have also been provided to all districts, it said.

Along with these, 625 gazetted officers of UP Police, 1,807 inspectors, 9,598 sub-inspectors, 11,627 head constables and 48,649 constables have also been put on duty, it added.

The Model Code of Conduct for the elections came into force on January 8 after the announcement of polls in Uttar Pradesh by the Election Commission.

During this period, the model code of conduct was strictly followed by the Uttar Pradesh Police without any discrimination as per the instructions of the Election Commission, police said in its statement.

A total of 1,339 FIRs and 412 crime reports were registered regarding violation of election-related rules and regulations since the day the Model Code came into force, the police said.

Out of this, a total of 261 cases have been registered by Lucknow zone, the maximum in the state, it said.