Muslim stay away, million cast right in UP

LUCKNOW: Millions voted on Saturday in the fifth leg of Uttar Pradesh's staggered assembly elections but Muslim turnout was low in most of the 57 constituencies, officials said.

After a slow start, some 32 per cent of the estimated 15.9 million voters had voted by 2 pm in the nine districts of Hardoi, Unnao, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Fatehpur, Chitrakoot and Banda that went to the polls.

Officials said it was intensified security in certain violence-prone places that led to voters turning out in large numbers.

Election Commission officials here felt that the overall turnout at the end of seven hours of polling was about the same as in the four previous rounds.

"After so many hours of polling, I can safely say that the voter turnout was quite similar to the earlier rounds," said Chief Election Officer A.K. Bishnoi, who went on to add: "Significantly it has been peaceful so far."

Authorities are, however, still keeping their fingers crossed because of the presence of a large number of contestants with criminal antecedents in the fray.

Of the 850 candidates including 55 women contesting Saturday in the 57 seats in this round, as many as 115 face criminal charges.

Polling in one constituency was cancelled following the death of the Congress candidate in a road accident.

A total of 15,492 polling stations were set up, with over 18,000 electronic voting machines.

Apart from several political bigwigs including prominent state ministers, the prestige of the top leaders of India's two leading parties - the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - is at stake in this phase.

These include Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) star and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, since the assembly seats falling under their respective parliamentary constituencies voted Saturday.

The highest polling percentage was recorded in Unnao, where 38 percent had already shown up at balloting centres. In the second place was Rae Bareli, the political turf of Sonia Gandhi (33 percent).

Rahul Gandhi's parliamentary constituency Amethi also witnessed a low turnout (30 percent), which was about the same as Lucknow - the political home of Vajpayee.

Pratapgarh, where many of the key contestants face criminal cases, also witnessed low poling (28 percent), while the lowest turnout of 26 percent was reported from Banda, the land of dreaded bandits.

In the last assembly poll in 2002, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) bagged 19 of the seats, followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (16), Samajwadi Party (14), Congress (4) and independents (five seats).