Lucknow (The Hawk): In the byelections for one Lok Sabha and two assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh on Monday, the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) coalition and the BJP are expected to face off directly.
The Congress and the BSP are not running for the seats.
On Monday, voting will take place from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the results will be announced on December 8.
A notification from the Chief Electoral Officer's office in Uttar Pradesh said that 24.43 lakh voters will cast their ballots in the byelections.
According to the report, there are 132 voters in the third group, 11.29 million women voters, and 13.14 million men voters.
3,062 polling places in 1,945 voting centres will be used for voting.
While Mulayam Singh Yadav, the founder of the Samajwadi Party (SP), has caused a byelection to be held for the Mainpuri parliamentary seat, elections were also required in Rampur Sadar and Khatauli because SP MLA Azam Khan and BJP MLA Vikram Singh Saini were both disqualified due to their convictions in separate cases.
While Saini lost his assembly membership after his conviction in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case, Khan was disqualified after a judge sentenced him to three years in prison in a 2019 hate speech case.
The BJP holds a solid majority at both the federal and state levels, thus the results of the byelections won't have any bearing on either.
However, the victory would provide the candidate a psychological edge before the general elections in 2024.
According to the Election Commission, there are six candidates running for office in Mainpuri; 14 are running from Khatauli, and 10 are running from Rampur Sadar.
Dimple Yadav, the wife of SP president Akhilesh Yadav and the older daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, is running against BJP candidate Raghuraj Singh Shakya in Mainpuri.
Prior to the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections earlier this year, the BJP candidate, who was once tight with Shivpal Singh Yadav, the uncle of Akhilesh Yadav and the leader of the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party, switched to the saffron party.
The son of former BJP MP Shiv Bahadur Saxena, Akash Saxena, is running against senior SP leader Azam Khan's protégé Asim Raja in Rampur Sadar, while Rajkumari Saini, the wife of Vikram Singh Saini, is taking on Madan Bhaiya from the RLD in Khatauli.
Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Keshav Prasad Maurya, Brajesh Pathak, and Bhupendra Chaudhary, the head of the Uttar Pradesh BJP, have all been prominent BJP campaigners.
Along with running an active campaign for his wife in Mainpuri, SP leader Akhilesh Yadav also joined Azam Khan and Dalit leader Chandrasekhar Azad at a rally in Rampur Sadar to support the party's candidate, Asim Raza.
The electoral commission has set up webcasting at polling places in the three constituencies in the interim. The district election officer, the chief electoral officer, and the Election Commission of India will all oversee the webcasting.
Teams with video cameras have also been placed in each of the three constituencies.
Additionally, Central Armed Police Forces have been sent out. They will also keep watch over the secure rooms where the electronic voting machines will be kept after the polls close.
Three general observers, three expenditure observers, and three police observers have all been assigned by the ECI. In addition, 636 micro-observers, 48 zonal magistrates, and 288 sector magistrates have been assigned.
He claimed that in addition to the 13,777 poll workers, 778 heavy vehicles and 1004 light vehicles have been used to finish the election process.
(Inputs from Agencies)
