Lucknow, Feb 10 (UNI): Around 60.17% votes were polled till 6 pm at 58 seats spread over 11 districts in the first phase of Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections on Thursday.
This time, voting percentage has dropped by 3.30% as compared to 2017 polls. In the 2017 Assembly elections, voter turnout in this phase was 63.47%.
Chief Electoral Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said there were 2.28 crore voters in this phase and voting was held at 26,027 polling booths in 10,853 polling stations.
Kairana seat in Shamli district recorded maximum voter turnout of 75.12%, whereas Sahibabad seat in Ghaziabad district witnessed lowest turnout of 45%.
Districtwise, Shamli recorded average voting of 69.42%, whereas Ghaziabad witnessed the lowest average voter turnout of 54.77%. Other than these two districts, Muzaffarnagar recorded 65.34%, Meerut registered 60.91%, Baghpat 61.35%, Hapur 60.50%, Gautam Buddha Nagar 56.73%, Bulandshahr 60.52%, Aligarh 60.49%, Mathura 63.28% and Agra recorded 60.33% till 6 pm.
However, the Election Commission officials said that voting percentage might increase as polling continued at some places, even after 6 pm.
“Directives have been issued to ensure that those present at the polling stations are allowed to cast their votes,” they said.
With this, the fate of 623 candidates and 73 females has been sealed in the electronic voting machines.
Nine Ministers in the Yogi government were trying their luck in this phase. These include Shrikant Sharma from Mathura, Atul Garg from Ghaziabad, Suresh Rana from Thana Bhawan, Kapil Dev Agarwal from Muzaffarnagar, Sandeep Singh from Atrauli, Chaudhary Laxmi Narain from Chhata, Anil Sharma from Shikarpur, G S Dharmesh from Agra Cantt and Dinesh Khatik from Hastinapur.
