Lucknow, Jun 1 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh recorded a polling percentage of 54 till 5 pm in the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Saturday, the Election Commission (EC) said.
Voting ended at 6 pm sealing the fate of 144 candidates in 13 constituencies of the state, including Varanasi, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third consecutive term in the Lok Sabha.
Poll officials said that the turnout figure could increase as data is being compiled.
Besides Varanasi, the other seats where polling took place were Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon (SC), Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Robertsganj (SC).
According to the EC, the polling percentage till 5 pm is — Ballia 50.56, Bansgaon 50.06, Chandauli 58.19, Deoria 54.13, Ghazipur 53.53, Ghosi 53.19, Gorakhpur 52.53, Kushinagar 56.04, Maharajganj 58.66, Mirzapur 55.83, Robertsganj 54.25, Salempur 50.21 and Varanasi 54.83.
Uttar Pradesh sends the highest number of 80 members to the Lower House of Parliament among all states and Union Territories. The bypoll for the Duddhi (reserved for Scheduled Tribes) assembly constituency in Sonbhadra district was also held on Saturday. The poll percentage in Duddhi stood at 54.48 at 5 pm.
Six candidates contested from the Duddhi seat that fell vacant after BJP MLA Ram Dular’s disqualification following his conviction in a rape case.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath exercised his franchise in Gorakhpur, while Union Minister Anupriya Patel, a candidate from Mirzapur, cast her vote in Mirzapur.
Gorakhpur has earlier been represented in the Lok Sabha by Adityanath for five times. Union ministers Mahendra Nath Pandey, Pankaj Chaudhary and Patel contested from Chandauli, Maharajganj and Mirzapur respectively.
From Ghazipur, mafia don-turned-politician late Mukhtar Ansari’s brother Afzal Ansari was in the fray and from Ballia, former prime minister Chandrashekhar’s son Neeraj Shekhar contested.
Campaigning for the 13 seats ended on Thursday evening.
According to the EC, voting for all the Lok Sabha seats in the seventh phase, barring Robertsganj, ended at 6 pm.
In the Robertsganj (SC) Lok Sabha seat and Duddhi assembly constituency, voting concluded at 4 pm.
In Ballia, a 70-year-old man collapsed and died at a polling booth set up at a primary school in Chak Bahuddin village, an official said.
While Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Sikandarpur Ravi Kumar said Rambachan Chauhan fell ill before he could join the queue of voters at the booth, local residents claimed that he experienced dizziness while standing in the queue and fainted.
Voters in Ballia’s Math Dhajju Giri village boycotted the polls over their demand for road connectivity and electricity supply. Local SHO Dharamveer Singh said there are about 900 voters in the village.
In Rasulpur village of Ballia, several voters boycotted the Lok Sabha polls and raised their demand for an underpass, saying they were facing great difficulties in its absence.
Circle Officer of Rasra Mohammad Faheem Qureshi had said earlier in the day that only about 25 voters have exercised their franchise at the polling station.
In a series of posts tagging the Election Commission on ‘X’ , the Samajwadi Party alleged slow voting at a booth under the Chandauli Lok Sabha segment and accused the presiding officer at a booth in Ballia Lok Sabha constituency’s Bairia and the BJP booth agents of rigging.
The party also alleged that CCTV cameras had been switched off by the administration at booths 430 and 431 in the Chanbe assembly segment under the Mirzapur Lok Sabha constituency.
In Maharajganj district, voters were given a sapling each at the polling centre set up at a primary school in Nagar Panchayat Chowk.
Uttar Pradesh witnessed a direct contest between the BJP-led NDA and INDIA bloc members Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress.
State Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said there are 2,50,56,877 voters in the 13 Lok Sabha seats in this phase, including 1,17,44,922 women and 1,058 third-gender electors. PTI NAV CDN CDN ANB ANB
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