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Voting for the fourth phase for 59 seats in central, Awadh and Terai regions of Uttar Pradesh was underway with 57.45 per cent polling recorded till 5 pm on Wednesday.
Lakhimpur Kheri and Pilibhit recorded the highest poll percentage of 62.45 per cent and 61.42 per cent, respectively. These districts were most impacted by the farmers’ protests and the subsequent violence where the son of State Minister for Home Ajay Mishra Teni along with 11 others was charged with murder after having allegedly crushed to death four farmers..
Largely urban parts such as Lucknow, which includes nine assembly constituencies, recorded 54.98 per cent voter turnout till 5 pm.
A high-voltage campaign was simultaneously being conducted with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a rally barely 28 kilometres away from Lucknow in Barabanki, charging the challenger Akhilesh Yadav of “nepotism, corruption and supporting terrorism and terrorists”. The PM addressed rallies in Barabanki and Kaushambi.
“While these people who only promote their own family were ruling UP, there were serial terror attacks. But instead of ensuring strict punishment for terrorists, the Samajwadi Party government was busy getting them released. History is our witness that these people cannot be trusted with the safety and security of the people of UP,” the PM said.
Akhilesh Yadav, addressing a poll rally in Bahraich, maintained that the BJP leaders are panicking now because they have lost the election. “The polling results will be out on March 10 but our Baba Mukhya Mantri has booked a plane ticket from Lucknow to Gorakhpur for March 11. Imagine how scared are BJP leaders. Are they scared or not? (the crowd says yes). They don’t know that there is a 440-volt current running among the people against the BJP,” Akhilesh Yadav said.
Comments on Ahmadabad blasts
BJP has, of late, stepped up the attack on SP as a party “promoting terrorism” with the PM saying at a rally in Hardoi that the bombs in Ahmadabad blasts, on which the conviction and sentencing of accused have recently happened, were placed in the SP’s election symbol – the cycle.
Most of the Opposition, including the Congress which is fighting independently, has dismissed these charges as “meaningless”. “They should talk about price rise, unemployment and the problem of stray cattle for the farmers. This whole terrorism charge is meaningless,” said Priyanka Gandhi, the Congress’s chief campaigner in UP.
The BJP hopes to better its performance from the fourth phase after having faced the consolidation of Jats, Yadavs and Muslims who dominate the western to the SP’s pocket-borough areas including Etah, Etawah, Mainpuri, Kannauj, Firozabad, etc.
The BJP has so far done its best in the Bundelkhand region that includes districts like Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur ,etc. and faced a tough challenge in the upper Doab region where the substantial Jats and Muslim vote had consolidated in favour of the SP.
In the build-up to the fourth phase, the party’s chief strategist Amit Shah who had, from the beginning posited the SP as the BJP’s main challenger, said that the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will perform well.
This remark, believed to be aimed at scattering the Muslims between SP and BSP as also preventing the Dalit vote from gravitating towards the SP, has been cautiously welcomed by the BSP. “It is his (Amit Shah’s) badappan (magnanimity) that he has acknowledged the truth,” said Mayawati.
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