Final phase of voting begins for local body polls in Uttar Pradesh

Voting for the final phase of urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh covering 38 districts, including Meerut, Ghaziabad, Shahjahanpur, Bareilly, Aligarh, Kanpur, and Ayodhya began on Thursday morning. Voting will be held from 7 am to 6 pm on Thursday.

The polls are considered significant as political parties are trying to showcase their strength before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Campaigning for the final phase ended on Tuesday evening with BJP and Samajwadi Party leaders criss-crossing the poll-bound areas.

Shahjahanpur will vote to elect its first mayor. Meerut and Aligarh had BSP mayors in 2017 while the BJP ruled the rest.

According to the State Election Commission (SEC), over 1.92 crore voters are eligible to cast their votes to elect their representatives in the second phase. The first phase of voting was held on May 4.

The counting of votes for both the phases will take place on May 13.

As many as 39,146 candidates are in the fray in the second round for 6,929 posts, which includes seven mayors and 581 corporators.

Apart from this, voting will be held to elect 95 chairpersons and 2,520 members of nagar palika parishads, and 267 chairpersons and 3,459 members of various nagar panchayats.

The SEC said 77 representatives, including nine corporators in this round, have been elected unopposed.

UP's minister of state (independent charge) for Environment, Forest and Climate Change will cast his vote in Bareilly.

According to district president of the BJP in Shahjahanpur KC Mishra, ministers Jitin Prasada and Suresh Khanna will cast their votes in Shahjahanpur.

Another minister in the UP government, JPS Rathore, will also cast his vote in Shahjahanpur.

The campaigning for the second phase of the polls saw UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath targeting the Samajwadi Party in different parts of the state, including Kanpur, Ayodhya and Aligarh.

Both the Deputy Chief Ministers, Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, Union minister Smriti Irani, UP BJP chief Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary also campaigned for the party candidates.

From the opposition camp, Mainpuri MP Dimple Yadav and senior party leader Shivpal Yadav extended a helping hand to SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, who had been campaigning for the party nominees.

According to the final list of reserved seats, the mayor seat in Agra has been reserved for SC (female), Jhansi for SC, Shahjahanpur and Firozabad for OBC (female), Saharanpur and Meerut for OBC, and Lucknow, Kanpur and Ghaziabad have been reserved for women.

Meanwhile, Special Director General of Police (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar said for peaceful conduct of the polls, apart from one lakh civil police personnel, 76 companies and 2 platoons of the PAC, 35 companies of CAPF and 7,935 under-training sub-inspectors have been deployed.