Uttar Pradesh reported a voter turnout of 57.36 per cent in the fifth phase of polling in the 51 Assembly constituencies that went to the polls on Monday. The final figure could go up to 60 per cent, the Election Commission said.
In the 2012 elections, these constituencies had reported a polling percentage of 57.09 per cent, while they reported a voter turnout of 55.58 per cent during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.
“The elections during the fifth phase on Monday were peaceful without any untoward incident,” said Deputy Election Commissioner Vijay Dev. A total of 1.81 crore voters were entitled to exercise their franchise while there were 600 candidates in the fray in the fifth phase.
“The Commission used over 21,000 Control Units and over 22,000 Ballot Units while Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) was used in five Assembly constituencies including Ayodhya, Gonda and Basti during this phase of elections. The Commission had to replace 141 Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) or 0.66 per cent of the EVMs used while 107 VVPAT or 2.74 per cent of the machines used needed to be replaced,” Dev added.
Ambedkar Nagar, Bahraich, Faizabad, Sultanpur, Sant Kabir Nagar and Soddharth Nagar were among the districts which went to polls on Monday. Amethi had the maximum number of candidates at 24 in a single Assembly constituency.
Authorities seized cash worth ₹ 4.21 crore during the fifth phase of voting while liquor worth ₹ 6.43 crore was also seized. In addition jewellery worth ₹ 53.36 lakh was also seized, Commission officials said.
“The total cash seized till date is at ₹ 155.43 crore while liquor worth ₹ 58.85 crore has been seized. In addition drugs and narcotics worth ₹ 7.92 crore and gold and silver worth ₹ 22.15 crore have also been seized,” Dev said.
Uttar Pradesh is to see another two phases of elections on March 4 and March 8 with votes for all 403 Assembly constituencies being counted on March 11.