 "Dance of Democracy: UP witnesses phase-I polling tomorrow")
Uttar Pradesh is all set to witness phase-I polling in 73 assembly constituencies across 15 districts in western parts of the state tomorrow.
These include UP areas comprising the National Capital Region (NCR), tourist hubs of Agra and Mathura, besides communally sensitive districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli.
A total of 839 candidates are in fray in phase-I, while several polling booths had been identified as sensitive and elaborate security arrangements made for ensuring free and fair poll.
The districts going to poll in phase I include Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar, Hapur, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Mathura, Hathras, Agra, Firozabad, Etah and Kasganj.
The electioneering in these constituencies had come to an end yesterday evening with top leaders of all major political parties, namely the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party (SP), Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) lending the required firepower to consolidate their vote bank ahead of actual polling day.
BJP had swept the 2014 Lok Sabha poll riding on the Narendra Modi wave, although BSP is also a considerable force to reckon with in these areas due to her committed dalit vote.
Meanwhile, the SP-Congress alliance and BSP are likely to give a tough fight to BJP in this assembly poll.
Since, Muslims comprise a sizeable chunk of the population in Western UP, the poll outcome would largely depend upon their voting pattern. Their consolidation in favour of either SP-Congress or BSP would weaken the chances of BJP, while their division would directly benefit the poll prospects of the BJP candidates.
Claiming to be champions of minorities' rights, both, BSP and SP-Congress alliance have over the last few weeks been vigourously appealing Muslims to vote for their outfits.
BJP is hoping to repeat 2014 poll success and is counting on the goodwill of its senior leaders, the prominent being Hukum Singh, Satyapal Singh, Rajvir Singh, Laxmikant Bajpai, Suresh Rana, Sangeet Som etc. The party had been raising issues related to the law and order, exodus from Western UP, triple talaq, illegal slaughter houses etc during politicking.
