Express News Service
LUCKNOW: The third phase of UP elections over 59 constituencies across 16 districts comprising eight of central UP also known as Yadav land, four of Kanpur division and Bundelkhand each witnessed a moderate turnout of 57.58 per cent as per the figures released by State Election Commission till 5 pm on Sunday.
However, the voting continued till 6 pm and the final figures will be revised by the state election commission on Monday.
The voters’ turnout in the third phase of the current elections is lower than the corresponding phase of 2017 Assembly polls as it was 62.98 per cent. Of the total 59 seats which went to polls on Sunday, at least 28 seats had a dominant Yadav population.
In the third phase, of 59 seats up for grabs across Mainpuri, Etawah, Kannauj, Firozabad, Farrukhabad, Auriayya, Jhansi, Mahoba, Lalitpur, Hamirpur, Hathras, Kanpur Nagar, Kanpur Dehat, Kasganaj, Etah and Jalaun, 49 were bagged by the ruling the BJP which succeeded in breaching the Yadav citadel. The Samajwadi Party had won eight seats and one each had gone to BSP and Congress.
The district which locked the highest percentage of voting in the third phase on Sunday has been Lalitpur in Bundelkhand with 67.38 per cent (72.02% in 2017) and the district which registered the lowest polling percentage has been Kanpur Nagar with 50.76 per cent. It had recorded the lowest 57.26% voting in 2017 as well.
In phase-3, the fate of a total of 627 candidates including 97 women was sealed in the EVMs. Around 2.16 crore voters of which 1.07 crore were men and over 99,79,704 women exercised their franchise to elect their favourite MLA.
The prominent names in the fray in phase–3 included SP chief and former UP CM Akhilesh Yadav from Karhal, Shivpal Singh Yadav contesting on SP symbol from Jaswantnagar, Satish Mahana of BJP from Mahrajpur of Kanpur, Asim Arun of BJP from Kannauj Sadar, Ramveer Upadhyaya of BJP from Sadabad, Nilima Katiyar, Yogi Minister from Kalyanpur in Kanpur Nagar, Rakesh Sachan of BJP from Bhognipur and Ravi Sharma of BJP from Jhansi.
During more or less peaceful voting in the third phase, a 25-year-old BJP worker was killed in the Hathras district on Sunday. The deceased was identified as Krishna Yadav, a general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM).
Local police first received information about the murder around 2.30 pm on Sunday. Krishna Yadav was shot inside his house in the Gausganj Mohalla area of the Sikandra Rao assembly constituency. Relatives rushed the 25-year-old to the trauma centre in Aligarh where he was declared dead upon arrival. The victim’s sister said he suffered a bullet injury to the head.
Hathras police in a statement said spots of blood were found on the first floor of Yadav’s residence. A homemade pistol and an empty cartridge have also been recovered from the scene of the crime.
