Rattled by the low turnout of voters in the first phase of urban local bodies elections on May 4 for mayoral polls in big cities, the State Election Commission has directed the district officials to ensure all facilities for the voters and motivate them to cast their votes.
In the first phase of polling in Lucknow and other big towns the voter turnout was below 40 per cent.
State Election Commissioner Manoj Kumar said here on Sunday that the district election officials had been asked to ensure that the voters do not face any inconvenience at the polling station. The SEC on Sunday reviewed the preparations in 38 districts for the second phase of polling on May 11. In the second phase of polling, mayoral elections will be held in seven nagar nigams besides polling for 590 nagar nigam wards, 95 chairpersons of nagar parishads and 25,551 ward members, 268 chairpersons of nagar panchayats and 3,495 nagar panchayat wards. In the second phase 7,006 posts of urban local bodies will go to polls.
The SEC said candidates for a total of 77 posts, including one nagar panchayat chairperson, had been elected unopposed in the second phase of the urban local bodies elections.
The Rabupura nagar panchayat chairperson of Gautam Buddha Nagar district was elected unopposed. Apart from this, five ward members from Aligarh, three from Meerut, one from Ghaziabad have been elected unopposed. Similarly, out of 36 unopposed members in nagar panchayats, 16 have been elected from Gautam Buddha Nagar, three from Etah, two each from Azamgarh, Banda, Kasganj, Farrukhabad, Aligarh and Hathras and one each from Bulandshahr, Barabanki, Siddharthnagar, Pilibhit and Hamirpur, according to a press statement issued by the SEC on Saturday.
The SEC said that 31 members of municipal wards had been elected unopposed in different districts. He said seven municipal council members in Etah, five in Budaun, four in Bulandshahr, three in Etawah, two each from Kanpur Nagar, Kasganj, Baghpat and one each in Kannauj, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Mirzapur, Sultanpur and Hapur had been elected unopposed.
The SEC said that the second phase of polling would be held on May 11 for seven municipal corporations, 590 municipal wards, 95 nagar palika parishad chairpersons and 2,551 ward members and 268 posts of nagar panchayat chairpersons and 3,495 ward members in 38 districts of the state.
In the first phase on May 4, polling was held for various posts of nagar nigam, nagar palika parishad and nagar panchayats in 37 districts including 10 municipal corporations.
The counting of votes of both the phases will be taken up on May 13.