Lucknow, Dec 1 (UNI) Polling for the 11 seats of Uttar Pradesh legislative council biennial polls from the graduate and teachers constituencies commenced in a dull note on Tuesday morning.
The polling in these 11 seats commenced at 0800 hrs and will end at 1700 hrs. The counting of votes would be taken up on December 3.
EC sources said that the polling started at a dull note and just few voters turned up in the morning.
A total of 12,69,817 voters are eligible to cast their franchise in the 5 graduate seats at 1808 polling booths while 2,06,335 voters would cast their votes for 6 teachers constituencies in 813 polling booths.
A total of 199 candidates are in the fray from 5 graduate and 6 teachers constituencies spread out in the entire state. There are 114 candidates in the graduate seats and 85 in the teachers constituencies.
EC sources said there are 11 observers, one in each constituency to observe the fairness of the polls.
Besides there to maintain law and order, there are 952 sector magistrates, 413 zonal magistrates besides all the booths will have micro observers, one in each booth and it will be intensively video-graphed.
The covid-19 protocol would be enforced during this polling with face mask, social distancing and hand washing would be compulsory. Every voter would be screened before entering the booth.
The seats where the biennial polls will be held are Lucknow division, Varanasi division, Agra division, Meerut division and Allahabad-Jhansi division of the graduate constituencies and Lucknow division, Varanasi division, Agra division, Meerut division, Bareilly-Moradabad division and Gorakhpur-Faizabad division of the teachers' constituencies.
These 11 seats fell vacant on May 6 last but due to Covid, the elections to these seats were delayed for 6 months.
There are 22 candidates in the fray from Agra graduate seat, 16 in Allahabad- Jhansi graduate seat, 24 in Lucknow Graduate seat, 30 in Meerut graduate seat and 22 in Varanasi graduate seat.
Similarly, there are 16 candidates in Agra teachers seat, 15 in Bareilly- Moradabad teachers seat, 11 in Lucknow teachers seat, 15 in Meerut teachers seat and 12 in Varanasi teachers seat.
Ruling BJP which is contesting the polls for the first time has given candidates in 9 seats and will support independent candidates in 2 other seats. BJP is set to win the majority of the seats as per the political observers.
The BJP candidates are Er Avith Kumar Singh( Lucknow- Graduate), Kedarnath Singh ( Varanasi- Graduate), Manvendra Pratap Singh ( Agra- graduate), Dinesh Kumar Goel( Meerut- graduate), and Dr Yogesh Dutt Sharma( Allahabad-Jhansi graduate).
The other four BJP candidates of the teachers constituencies are Umesh Dwivedi (Lucknow), Dinesh Chandra Vasisth (Agra), Shrichand Sharma (Meerut) and Dr Hari Singh Dillon (Bareilly-Moradabad).
The Congress candidates are, Rajesh Dwivedi (Agra graduate), Jitendra Kumar (Teachers- Meerut), Ajay Kumar Singh (Allahabad-Jhansi graduate), Brajesh Kumar Singh (Graduate Lucknow), Sanjeev Singh (Varanasi- Graduate), Nagendra Dutt Tripathi (Gorakhpur - Faizabad teachers) and Dr Mehndi Hassan (Bareilly- Moradabad teachers).
Samajwadi Party candidates are, Dr Aseem (Agra), Shamshad Ali (Meerut), Ram Singh Rana (Lucknow), Ashutosh Sinha (Varanasi) and Dr Maan Singh (Allahabad- Jhansi), all for the graduate seats and Umashanker Choudhury Patel (Lucknow), Lal Bihar (Varanasi), Sanjay Kumar Mishra (Bareilly- Moradabad) Dharmendra Kumar (Meerut), Harendra Choudhury (Agra) and Awadhesh (Gorakhpur- Faizabad) for teachers constituencies.
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