Nearly 39 pc voting till 1 pm in UP

Nearly 39 per cent of voters exercised their franchise till 1 pm Thursday in the polling for the eight Lok Sabha of Uttar Pradesh in the second phase of elections.

The Election Commission figures put the overall voter turnout till 1 pm at 38.94 percent in the voting.

Polling is underway in four reserved constituencies of Nagina, Bulandshahr, Hathras and Agra, besides four general constituencies of Amroha, Aligarh, Fatehpur Sikri and Mathura.

According to the Election Commission, the polling percentage till 1.00 PM was 38.71 in Nagina, 43.26 in Amroha, 39.70 in Bulandshahr, 37.60 in Aligarh, 41.18 in Hathras, 36.90 in Mathura, 38.24 in Agra and 35.96 in Fatehpur Sikri.

In Gujjupura village, under Nagina parliamentary constituency, residents were upset over absence of a polling booth in their village and boycotted voting in the initial hours of polling Thursday.

However, voters later went on to cast their vote following the intervention by the Bijnor district administration authorities.

"In Gujjupura, the number of voters is less than 300, and hence under the instructions of the Election Commission, it was merged with the next polling booth located less than two kilometres from the village," Bijnor District Magistrate Sujeet Kumar told PTI.

"As per standards set up by the Election Commission, if a polling booth is located within two kilometres from a village, and after adding the smaller-size booth (less than 300 voters) to the bigger size, if the number of voters do not exceed 1,400; then they can be merged. This was done in this case," he said.

Kumar said the number of voters in the village where residents were demanding a polling booth was in the range of 150-200, which is a small-size booth.

The DM said after the sub-divisional magistrate persuaded people to vote, some of them exercised their franchise, and the rest will vote subsequently.

Meanwhile, a BJP MLA from Amroha district alleged that burqa-clad women were indulging in fake voting.

The the district administration, however, denied the charge.

The eight Lok Sabha seats figuring in this phase were bagged by the BJP in 2014.

This time it faces a tough fight from the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.

In this phase, the BSP has fielded candidates on six of the eight constituencies.

The SP and RLD are contesting Hathras and Mathura, respectively, as part of the alliance.

The Election Commission has set up 16,162 polling booths in 8,751 polling centres for this phase in the state.

There are 85 candidates in the fray for the eight seats, with 15 of them, the highest, in Fatehpuri Sikri.