UP Assembly Election 2012: Over 59% voting in fifth phase

NEW DELHI: The fifth phase of assembly elections in UP saw 59.2% voting - almost 12 percentage point jump over 2007. Voters in the politically-crucial state, thus, continued to keep political parties guessing about the verdict.

Forty-nine assembly seats, covering 12 districts of Bundelkhand and Avadh, had recorded a turnout of 47.57% five years ago. The five legs of polling held so far have registered a percentage close to 60. The 2007 assembly polls had witnessed a voting percentage of 46. A high voter turnout, conventional wisdom says, is a manifestation of the people's desire for change. But many state elections held in the past few years, as in Bihar, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, defied this trend.

The districts that went to polls on Thursday include the Yadav belt of Mainpuri-Etawah-Firozabad-Etah. The area has a high concentration of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's clansmen, and there as many as 20 assembly constituencies in which they are in a position to swing the final verdict. But the areas also has a significant presence of Lodhs, Kushwahas and other OBCs, and they generally do not share a very good equation with Yadavs. While BJP has been working hard to win the backing of the non-Yadav backwards, BSP is struggling to ensure that they continue to rally behind it.

BJP has fielded former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati from Charkhari in the Mahoba district, and has also enlisted the services of the NRHM scam-tainted former state minister Babu Singh Kushwaha to woo the Kushwahas/Sakyas/Sainis. The party is hoping to perform better in the Bundelkhand region.

Congress is pinning its hopes on Rahul Gandhi's efforts to take up the cause of Bundelkhand. The party general secretary has, since the 2009 general election, made a concerted attempt to highlight the backwardness of the region, and claimed credit for the announcement of the 7,266 crore Bundelkhand package in 2009.

The package was meant for the overall development of Bundelkhand spread across districts in UP and MP and was to be implemented over three financial years between 2009-10 and 2011-12. Of this amount, 3,506 crore was meant for seven districts in UP and the remaining for MP. Its utilisation in UP came in for a lot of criticism, with BSP's political rivals accusing the Mayawati government of indulging in irregularities in implementing schemes to be taken up under the package.

Besides Uma Bharati, among those in the fray are leader of the opposition Shivpal Singh Yadav, contesting from Jaswantnagar, and former CM Kalyan Singh.