An estimated 64.66 per cent of the total of 2.60 crore voters exercised their franchise in the first phase of the UP assembly elections which was held in 73 Assembly segments of 15 west UP districts on Saturday.
Barring sporadic incidents in Sardhana and Kithore segments of Meerut and Shamli constituency, polling passed off peacefully on Saturday.
Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party workers came to a head, exchanged brickbats and even fired inteh air in Kithore segment. Trouble was also reported from one polling station of Sardhana as commotion broke out as BJP MlA and candidate Sangeet Som arrived in the area.
Sangeet Som’s brother Gagan was arrested by the police when he tried to enter a polling station with a licensed handgun. An FIR was later registered against Gagan.
Reports of minor clashes were received from Aligarh, Etah, Meerut and Ferozabad.
In Meerut, firing took place near booth 34-37 at Mundali village in Kithore Assembly segment when supporters of SP and BSP fired at each other leaving one person injured. labour minister Shahid Manzoor is seeking re election from this constituency.
For the first phase of polling, 26,823 polling booths were set up out of which 5,140 were identified as hyper-sensitive.
Polling ended at 5 pm while in several polling stations in Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and Meerut, long queues of voters were witnessed even after the deadline, but they were allowed to cast their votes.
In first phase of polling there were 839 candidates in the fray including 77 women, in which around 20 per cent have criminal cases registered against them and 36 per cent are crorepatis (multi-millionaires). The BJP and BSP have fielded candidates in all 73 seats while SP and ally Congress are contesting in 51 and 24 seats respectively and Rashtriya lok Dal has fielded candidates in 57 seats. As many as 293 Independents are also in the fray.
Prominent candidates trying their luck in the first phase are former state BJP chief laxmi Kant Bajpai, Muzaffarnagar riot accused Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, BJP MP Hukum Singh’s daughter Mriganka Singh and BJP national spokesperson Srikant Sharma. Others in the fray are Pradeep Mathur and Pankaj Malik of Congress and Samajwadi Party minister Shahid Manzoor.
ADG (law and order) Daljit Chaudhary said in lucknow that barring minor clashes, polling was totally peaceful in all 73 segments of west UP.
“Around 2 lakh policemen wer pressed into service for ensuring free and fair polls that included 823 companies of Central Para-military Forces,” Chaudhary said.
UP Chief Electoral Officer T Venkatesh said that there were some teething problem of faulty EVMs, polling was peaceful everywhere. He congratulated the people for coming out in large numbers to cast their votes.
As per Election Commission, polling percentage till 1 pm was around 39.80 per cent while by 3 pm it crossed 50 percent. At 3 pm, Agra polled 51.47 per cent, Aligarh 52.57 percent , Baghpat 53.30 percent , Bullandshahr- 54.20 percent , Etah 51 percent , Ferozabad 54.62 percent , Gautam Buddha nagar 51 percent , Ghaziabad- 46.60 percent , Hapur 54.93 percent , Hathras- 50.20 percent , Kasganj 50.87 percent , Mathura 55.42 percent , Meerut- 56.27 percent , Muzaffarngar 53.27 percent and Shamli 55.83 per cent.
In 2012 Assembly polls, the 73 segments polled an average of 61.04 per cent.
The second phase in 67 Assembly seats would be held on February 15. The last and seventh phase of polling will end on March 8 and the counting of all phases would be done on March 11.