UP Elections 2022: Under the first phase of Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, voting will be held in 58 assembly seats in 11 districts of the state tomorrow. All the districts where voting will be held in the first phase are from the western region of the state. Voting will start at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm. According to the information received from the Election Commission office, all the preparations have been completed for the first phase of elections.
Polling will be held in Shamli, Hapur, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Mathura and Agra districts in this phase. The campaigning work for the first phase came to a halt at 5 pm on Tuesday. A total of 623 candidates are in the fray in the first phase of elections and there are 2.27 crore voters in this phase.
50,000 security personnel deployed to maintain law and order
Around 50,000 paramilitary personnel belonging to 412 companies of central paramilitary forces have been deployed at various places to maintain law and order in western Uttar Pradesh as the campaigning for the first phase of assembly elections ends on Tuesday evening. . The police have sealed all the borders of the state. Strict vigil is being maintained to maintain peace in the 58 assembly constituencies where polling will be held tomorrow, officials said.
Security officials told ANI about the deployment of troops in sensitive areas that the maximum number of security personnel would be deployed in Muzaffarnagar, Aligarh and Meerut. In Mathura alone, 75 paramilitary personnel have been deployed and the total force deployed in this constituency is 21,000. Officials also informed that intense vigil is being maintained at the state borders of both Haryana and Rajasthan where police officers are listing car numbers.
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Officials said there would be force movement throughout and polling would be held amid tight security. Duty cards were allotted. Liquor shops have been closed for 48 hours and will open only after polling is over. Further, if hoardings, banners or posters of candidates are seen within a radius of 200 meters of the polling stations, the same shall be removed immediately. Earlier, the Election Commission has directed the governments of all the polling states not to misuse the official machinery.
First phase of polling will be held in Jat dominated area, reputation of many ministers at stake
The first phase of elections will be held in a Jat dominated area. In this phase, the political fate of the state government ministers Shrikant Sharma, Suresh Rana, Sandeep Singh, Kapil Dev Agarwal, Atul Garg and Chaudhary Laxmi Narayan will be decided. In the last assembly elections held in 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won 53 out of 58 seats in the first phase, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) got two seats each. Apart from this, a candidate of Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) also won.
Most of the campaigning for the first phase of elections was done digitally due to the ban on rallies and road shows by the Election Commission in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while spearheading the BJP’s election campaign, highlighted the achievements of the party-led governments at the Center and in Uttar Pradesh and asked people to beware of fake socialists, attacking the SP-RLD alliance. Apart from this, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath repeatedly raised the issue of exodus of Hindus from Kairana before the year 2017.
Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, AIMIM and Azad Samaj Party are also trying to make the UP elections interesting, but election analysts are skeptical about the success of these parties in the first phase. Voting will be held for 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh in seven phases from February 10 to March 7. While the counting of votes will take place on March 10. The term of the existing Legislative Assemblies in Uttar Pradesh will end on March 14, 2022.
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