The high-pitched campaign for the first phase of the urban local body elections in Uttar Pradesh came to an end on Tuesday with the ruling BJP and opposition parties pulling out all the stops to woo voters. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party made trips to different places on the last day of the campaign to engage directly with voters and attacked each other with their typical jibes. The campaign came to an end at 6 pm.
According to the State Election Commission, voters in 37 districts will vote in the first phase on Thursday to elect 7,593 representatives, including 10 mayors and 820 corporators. The second-phase polling will take place on May 11.
The two-phase elections will be a key test for the parties ahead of next year's Lok Sabha polls.
More than 2.40 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the first round of voting, officials said and added that all the posts are being contested on party symbols.
In the first phase, polling will be held for posts of 103 nagar palika parishad chairpersons and 2,740 nagar palika parishad members.
Apart from this, the voters in the first phase will also decide the fate of 275 nagar panchayat chairpersons and 3,645 nagar panchayat members.
Altogether 44,232 candidates are in the fray in the opening round.
SEC officials said 85 representatives, including 10 corporators, have already been elected unopposed.
As the campaigning for the polls intensified, Adityanath had termed the polls as "Dev-Asur Sangram (battle between deities and demons)." On the last day of campaigning, without naming anyone, the chief minister appeared to invoke nature as a great leveller - a force that delivers justice.
He was addressing an election meeting in Allahabad West constituency, which was represented five times by mafia-turned-politician Atiq Ahmad, who was killed recently.
"Some people had turned Prayagraj, where people suffering from injustice and atrocities come with a desire for justice, into a land of injustice and atrocities," he said.
The campaigning in this round also saw Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav embarking on a Metro train journey in Lucknow to campaign for his party, and accused the BJP of “stalling” work on the public transport project.
After a road show in Saharanpur on Tuesday, Yadav told reporters the chief minister, instead of talking about betterment of civic facilities, is mentioning "tamancha" (country-made pistol) to hoodwink voters.
Barring the BJP and the SP, whose leaders actively held election rallies, campaigning of other political parties was rather a low-key affair.
BSP chief Mayawati, who herself did not campaign, on Tuesday issued an appeal through tweets to the people to vote for her party.
"For this election also, BJP and other opposition parties have left no stone unturned in making attractive promises, making hollow claims, but the voters should not be misled by them. I appeal to all to vote only for BSP candidates for the development of the region," she said in a tweet.
With top Congress leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Mallikarjun Kharge busy in the Karnataka assembly elections, some state party leaders were seen seeking support for the party nominees. The Aam Aadmi Party, which has also jumped into the fray, is hopeful of staging some upsets.
The districts where the mayoral election will be held in the first phase are Saharanpur, Agra, Moradabad, Firozabad, Mathura, Jhansi, Prayagraj, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, and Varanasi.
Voting will be held from 7 am to 6 pm in all the districts, officials said.
Elaborating on security arrangements for the polls, Special DG (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar said that as many as 19,880 inspectors/sub-inspectors; 1,01,477 head constables/constables; 47,985 home guards; 86 companies of PAC; 35 companies of CAPF; and 7,500 under-training sub-inspectors will be posted for the first phase of the urban local bodies elections.
The counting of votes for both phases will take place on May 13.
(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)