Byelections held peacefully in U.P., Bihar and Odisha

Opposition says BJP govt. discouraged people from voting in Uttar Pradesh as only 32% cast their votes in Rampur; 53% votes polled in Bihar’s Kurhani with BJP, JD(U) locked in direct contest

The byelection in one Lok Sabha and three Assembly constituencies of Uttar Pradesh passed off peacefully on Monday, amid Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) charging the BJP government of using the administration to keep the voting percentage down in pockets of their influence – particularly in Rampur where only around 32% voters cast their franchise. While 51.8% of voters cast their vote in Mainpuri, Khatauli in Muzaffarnagar saw a voting percentage of 56.6% till 6 p.m. The BJP called the allegations of the Opposition a move to distract people from their impending defeat.

With the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) keeping out, the byelection saw a direct contest between the SP-RLD alliance and the BJP in Mainpuri, Khatauli, and Rampur.

More than the BJP, which has fought the bypoll with all its might, the contest will test the credibility of the SP as the main Opposition party in the State as Mainpuri and Rampur have been its traditional bastions and Khatauli has been a stronghold of RLD in the past.

Shivpal Yadav, president of Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party who patched up with his nephew SP president Akhilesh Yadav, before the poll, said, “Our supporters had to face harassment as officials tried to keep the voting percentage down which doesn’t match with Election Commission’s stated objective. Still, voters came out in large numbers and cast their vote as a tribute to Netaji.”

The election in Mainpuri was necessitated after the demise of Mulayam Singh and the party has fielded his daughter-in-law and former Kannauj MP Dimple Yadav, ostensibly to keep the family together. The BJP has fielded Raghuraj Singh Shakya, a protégé of Mr. Yadav. Despite the election being billed as a battle to save the legacy of Mulayam Singh, the voting percentage remained slightly lower than the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

In Rampur Sadar, where the voting percentage plummeted by more than 20% in comparison to the Assembly election earlier this year, SP MLA Abdullah Azam got into a spat with Additional Superintendent of Police Sansar Singh, alleging the police were not allowing voters belonging to a particular community to vote by creating an atmosphere of fear. Earlier, the party candidate had demanded that the election be held under the watch of the Army. His mother and former MLA Tanzeen Fatima described the poll as a joke and said the polling booths seemed to have turned into sites of mourning. The party tweeted videos of women alleging they were not allowed to cast votes by administration.

The district administration denied the charge and asked the SP leaders to approach the Election Commission if they had any grievances.