New Delhi, February 27 About 54.68 per cent voter turnout was recorded till 5 pm on Sunday for the fifth phase of polling in Uttar Pradesh across 61 Assembly constituencies across 12 districts in the State.
Polling in this phase includes the epicenter of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement in Ayodhya besides the erstwhile Congress bastions of Amethi and Rae Bareli in districts including Sultanpur, Chitrakoot, Pratapgarh, Kaushambi, Prayagraj, Barabanki, Bahraich, Shravasti, and Gonda.
It is also a test of the BJP’s social engineering endeavour that wrested a large chunk of non-Yadav OBCs, particularly the Kurmis that populate this region, from the Samajwadi Party (SP) and non-Jatav Dalits, specifically the Pasis who are predominant in these parts, from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the last two Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in 2017 in which the BJP alone won a staggering 312 of 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh.
BJP’s challenge
This time around, the BJP is facing a challenge from a reunited Samajwadi Party which has ended the factionalism between the party supremo Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav but more from political economy issues that have agitated the people especially high unemployment, price rise, and the problem of stray cattle which has harassed the farmers with their standing Rabi crops.
The BJP’s strong points are the distribution of free rations and the claim of improving law and order in the State with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s famed “bulldozer” image.
The BJP is leaving nothing to chance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigning aggressively across the States. The PM addressed rallies in the adjacent seats of Basti, Deoria, and Varanasi on Sunday where he questioned the nationalist credentials of BJP’s challengers whom he dubbed as “promotors of family and terrorism”.
“They were desperate, they wished me dead in Kashi,” he said. The PM said the BJP is the only party that has given primacy to the national interest. The PM mentioned the evacuation of Indians from the war-torn Ukraine as an instance of the BJP’s commitment to the people.
“The nation cannot trust those who have taken commission in defence contracts. For the BJP, it is always nation first. We have launched ‘Operation Ganga’ to evacuate our people from Ukraine,” said the PM.
Battle royale
The BJP had won 53 of the 61 seats in this phase in the 2017 Assembly polls.
It has some prominent leaders in the fray on Sunday including Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, who is fighting it out from the Sirathu assembly seat in Kaushambi district, Siddharth Nath Singh from Allahabad West, Rajendra Singh, alias Moti Singh, from Patti (Pratapgarh), Nand Gopal Gupta Nadi from Allahabad South and Ramapati Shastri from Mankapur (Gonda), and Congress legislative party leader Aradhana Mishra Mona, from Rampur Khas seat of Pratapgarh.
The last two phases of the elections will be held on March 3 and March 7, and the counting of votes is scheduled on March 10.