Fourth phase: Voting begins for 59 Assembly seats across nine districts in UP
Lucknow(PTI): Voting for 59 Assembly constituencies spread over nine districts in Uttar Pradesh began on Wednesday morning. The polling started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm.
This is the fourth phase of the Assembly polls in the state, where elections are to be held in seven rounds. As many as 624 candidates are in the fray in the fourth phase.
According to the Election Commission, 2.3 crore people, including 1.14 crore men and 99.3 lakh women, are eligible to vote, for which 24,643 polling booths and 13,817 poling centres have been set up in this phase.
The districts where the poling is being held are Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sitapur, Hardoi, Unnao, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Banda and Fatehpur.
Lakhimpur Kheri is the district where last year four farmers were mowed down by cars allegedly carrying BJP workers. Eight people, including the farmers, were killed in violence there on October 3.
Of the 59 seats, the BJP had won 51 in the 2017 Assembly elections, four had gone to the Samajwadi Party and three to the Bahujan Samaj Party. The BJP's ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) had bagged one seat.
In 2017, 62.55 per cent polling was reported on the seats while in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, it was 60.03 per cent.
Among the prominent candidates in this phase are Uttar Pradesh Law Minister Brijesh Pathak, SP's national spokesperson Anurag Bhadauria, former SP minister Abhishek Mishra, former Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly deputy speaker Nitin Agarwal and Aditi Singh.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
