Uttar Pradesh witnessed an average voter turnout of nearly 58.09 percent in the 13 constituencies that went to polls on Monday in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha Elections 2024. Barring a few incidents of scuffle and Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) malfunctioning, the state election commission said polling was concluded peacefully on all the 13 seats – Shahjahanpur (SC), Kheeri, Dhaurahra, Sitapur, Hardoi (SC), Mishrikh (SC), Unnao, Farrukhabad, Etawah (SC), Kannauj, Kanpur, Akbarpur and Bahraich (SC).
As per the data shared by the state election commission, the voter turnout in constituencies was – Shahjahanpur (SC) 53.24, Kheeri 64.73, Dhaurahra 61.91, Hardoi (SC) 57.57, Mishrikh (SC) 55.79, Unnao 55.44. Farrukhabad 58.97, Etawah (SC) 56.38, Kannauj 61.00 Kanpur 53.06. Akbarpur 57.66, Bahraich (SC) 57.45 and assembly sub-constituency 136-Dadraul 53.31 percent.
“Polling in all 13 Lok Sabha Seats went out peacefully. In order to ensure a free and fair voting process, webcasting was arranged at a total of 14,126 polling places, which was supervised at all three levels by the District Election Officer, Chief Electoral Officer and Election Commission of India,” said Navdeep Rinwa, State Chief Election Officer while addressing the press late on Monday evening.
Rinwa said that webcasting videography was also arranged at 5,420 polling stations. By categories eligible for postal ballot voting in the fourth phase (such as voters above 85 years of age, Divyangjan, Essential Services and Polling Personnel), postal ballots were cast by 35,045 voters.
In the 13 Lok Sabha seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had repeated 11 sitting MPs and named two new candidates – Ramesh Awasthi from Kanpur and Anand Kumar from the Bahraich-SC seat. The Samajwadi Party, a key member of the opposition INDIA bloc, had fielded candidates on 11 Lok Sabha seats in this phase, while the Congress had fielded its candidates on two seats – Kanpur (Alok Misra) and Sitapur (Rakesh Rathor).
Of these seats, the fourth phase of the LS Polls witnessed a high-profile poll battle in two constituencies – Lakhimpur Kheri and Kannauj. The BJP had fielded Union minister Ajay Mishra Teni, whose son is an accused in the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, from Kheri. On the Kannauj seat, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav contested as SP’s candidate.
On the day of voting, Akhilesh Yadav accused the BJP of rigging polls, claiming there were complaints of voting being disrupted in polling booths. “As soon as I arrived, the goons ran away from the booths,” claimed the SP chief at Chhibramau in Kannauj district.
Dip in Voter Turnout
Rinwa, while comparing the voters turnout with that of the 2019 Lok Sabha Polls, said that the average voter turnout on these 13 Lok Sabha Seat in the 2019 Election was 58.75 per cent.
Though the average voter turnout was just a little low from the past figures, this was not the first time when the average voter turnout remained low. The country’s most populous state, UP, witnessed a 57.34 per cent polling percentage in the 10 constituencies in the third phase, held on May 7, which was 2.58 per cent lower in comparison to that in 2019. Prior to this, the first phase of 2024 elections in eight parliamentary constituencies saw a 5 per cent decline in voter turnout in comparison to 2019 elections on the same seats. In phase-1 polling on April 4, the turnout was 61.11 per cent whereas in 2019, the turnout in eight constituencies was 66.37 per cent.
A similar trend was witnessed in the second phase polling (April 26) on eight Lok Sabha seats. There was a 6.71 per cent decline in turnout in 2024 polls in comparison to 2019. In the 2024 election, 55.19 per cent voter turnout was recorded whereas the 2019 election saw 61.90 per cent turnout in eight LS constituencies in the first phase.
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