The 3-phase municipal elections for 652 urban local bodies in Uttar Pradesh kicked off on Wednesday Nov 22,2017
Which municipal corporations are going for polls?
For the first phase, polling is being held in Meerut, Agra, Kanpur, Ayodhya and Gorakhpur. For the second phase, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Mathura, Allahabad, Lucknow and Varanasi will go to polls and for the third phase, voting will be held for Saharanpur, Moradabad, Bareilly, Firozabad and Jhansi.
Polling schedule, electorate and polling districts
The first phase of polling began on Wednesday, November 22. The next two phases will be held on November 26 and November 29. In all the three phases, a combined 3.32 crore voters are eligible to cast their vote at 36, 269 polling booths and 11,389 polling stations. The results will be declared on December 1.
On Wednesday, 24 districts in UP went to polls for the municipal elections with voting being held in 4,095 wards over 230 local bodies. As many as 3,731 polling stations and 11, 683 polling booths have been set up for the 1.09 crore eligible voters.
In the second phase, voting will be held across 25 districts covering 189 local bodies in 3,601 wards. A total 1.29 crore voters will be eligible to vote. As many as 13, 776 polling booths will be set up for this phase.
In the final phase, polling will be held in 26 districts for 233 local bodies in 4,299 wards. As many as 10,810 polling booths will be set up and around 94 lakh voters will be eligible to cast their ballot.
The Mathura-Vrindavan municipal corporation and Ayodhya municipal corporation (covering Faizabad and Ayodhya) formed under the Adityanath government are also going to polls.
The Bharatiya Janata Party had won a landslide victory in municipal polls in 2012 winning 10 out of 12 mayoral positions.The current Deputy Chief Minister of UP Dinesh Sharma had then won the position of Lucknow mayor.
EVMs and paper ballots
Paper ballots as well as electronic voting machines will be used for polls. EVMs will be employed for voting in 16 municipal corporations while in 438 municipal boards or nagar panchayats and 198 nagar palikas or town areas paper ballots will be used.
Opposition parties
Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav abstained from campaigning rigorously and held a handful of press conferences and meetings before the elections. Akhilesh’s suffered a massive defeat at the hands of BJP in the Assembly election and despite Adityanath jumping into the campaign trail, Akhilesh did not follow.
The Bahujan Samaj Party which is contesting the municipal polls after over 20 years didn’t see party supremo and former UP CM Mayawati campaign at all. Her party finished third in the Assembly elections and for long had a policy of not contesting local elections.
The municipal polls are being held eight months after the BJP swept the state polls. These local body elections are crucial for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath who launched the BJP’s campaign from the temple town Ayodhya earlier this month.
Polling began on Wednesday Nov 22,2017 to elect chairmen of local bodies in 24 districts of Uttar Pradesh, and the mayor of Agra along with 100 corporators, officials said.
In the three-phase election, 24 districts of Uttar Pradesh are going to polls on Wednesday, while 25 districts would go to the polls on November 26, and 26 districts on November 29.
Twenty-four districts of Uttar Pradesh with 1.09 crore voters would elect 4,325 candidates for various positions in the local bodies polls. The mayors of five corporations including Agra would also be elected.
"The expectation level is high and the contest is fierce, as all major political parties have put up formidable candidates for the post of Agra mayor," said insurance agent Sudheir Gupta, at the Vijay Nagar colony polling booth.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath casts his vote at a polling station in #Gorakhpur, in the first phase of local body election
The results would be announced on December 1.
The Agra mayor seat is being hotly contested by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Navin Jain, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Digambar Singh Dhakrey, Rahul Chaturvedi of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Vinod Bansal of the Congress.
The Aam Admi Party (AAP) has fielded Rajesh Gupta. The votes are likely to be divided among 13 mayoral candidates.
A district official told 4,200 policemen, 1,000 home guards, eight companies of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and two Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) companies have been deployed for poll duty.
The poll process would be supervised by 8,000 state government employees.
The Agra Municipal Corporation has 12,67,595 voters
Burqa-clad voters wait to cast their votes for local body elections, at a polling station in Meerut on Wednesday Nov 22,2017
No comments:
Post a Comment