The canvassing for the first phase was limited to the virtual medium due to a ban on road shows and physical rallies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the BJP campaign, pitching for a double-engine government for fast-paced development, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath tried to put the spotlight back on alleged "exodus" of Hindus from Kairana before 2017.
The SP-RLD alliance, on the other hand, has centred their electioneering on farmers' issues and has attacked Adityanath over poll promises.
BSP chief Mayawati, who started campaigning late, reminded people of her government's track record on law and order in the past. The Congress under the leadership of its general secretary Priyanka Gandhi has generated interest as seen in door-to-door campaigns.
A 12 lakh vote bank: Why parties are talking of old pension, new pension
A scheme that keeps coming up in the Uttar Pradesh election discourse, and has found mention in the manifestos of both the Samajwadi Party and Congress, is the pension for government employees.
Akhilesh Yadav announced last month that if the SP formed the government, it would restore a pre-2005 “old pension scheme” (the SP was in power at the time, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav). Six days later, UP Chief Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra held a review with officials and issued a statement specifying how the “new pension scheme” was more beneficial. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath then attacked Akhilesh, saying the “new pension scheme” had actually got clearance in 2005 under Mulayam, and remained in cold storage.
On Wednesday, the Congress got into the game, with its manifesto promising a “mid-way” solution. Whichever scheme is finally enforced, the beneficiaries would be those retiring around 2030-35, since it would apply to those hired after 2004. However, in the short term, all parties have eyes on the 12 lakh government employees and their families.
Express photographers Abhinav Saha and Praveen Khanna brings to you exclusive photographs from the UP consituencies that went to polls in the first phase of assembly elections. See more here
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Following the path of Samajwadi Party, the Congress also fielded a Brahmin woman candidate against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the Gorakhpur Urban Assembly seat.
The party named 37-year-old Chetna Pandey as its nominee in Gorakhpur Urban. A poet and singer, Pandey is the former vice-president of the student union at Gorakhpur University and has been active in the region’s social sphere. In the 2017 Assembly polls, she had contested as an Independent in the Shahjanwa constituency, but gathered only 2200 votes. This time, with the backing of the Congress, she hopes to make an impact against the outgoing chief minister. Read more
Upendra Dutt Shukla started out with the RSS student wing ABVP, went on to serve in the BJP for over 40 years, was the party’s in-charge of Gorakhpur region, then its Uttar Pradesh vice-president, and even stepped in to contest the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat when Yogi Adityanath gave it up to become Chief Minister.
If not all of this, what else to make them eligible for a ticket after Shukla’s death in 2020, is the question his family is asking. Denied one, the family moved to the Samajwadi Party. Come March 6, the wife of one of the oldest BJP faces in Gorakhpur, Subhavati Shukla, will be taking on one of the party’s biggest, Adityanath, from Gorakhpur Urban Assembly seat. Read more
A 59.61% voter turnout was recorded in the first phase pf UP elections that concluded at 6 pm on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission has revised the dates of assembly polls in Manipur. The state will now go to first phase of elections on February 28 and second phase on March 5.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav Thursday urged the Election Commission to take immediate action wherever there are allegations of EVM glitch or slow polling in the first phase of elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Additional Chief Election Officer (ACEO) B D Ram Tiwari said the voting process is going on peacefully while adding there were reports of a technical error in EVMs at a few places. “Those EVMs are being replaced,” news agency quoted Tiwari as saying. As many as 623 candidates are in the fray and around 2.27 crore people are eligible to vote in this phase.
Voters cast their votes in the first phase of assembly elections at Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress on Thursday of abusing General Bipin Rawat when he was alive and using his cut-outs now for votes.
Addressing a rally in Uttarakhand's Srinagar ahead of the February 14 state Assembly polls, Modi said it is the same Congress that had asked for proof of surgical strikes against terror hideouts in Pakistan.
He said a leader of the party had even called former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Rawat a "streetside hooligan".
Describing the Congress as a party with a single-minded pursuit for power, the prime minister said it can never understand the price of "sacrifices". --PTI
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday pointed out that there is "strength in our Union" and asked not to insult the spirit of India.
The first phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections witnessed a voter turnout of 48.24 per cent till 1 pm.
An FIR was registered on Thursday against a Muslim man who allegedly made an announcement on a loudspeaker atop a mosque in Lubuxur village, Meerut, appealing to people to vote in favour of the ‘bicycle’, the official election symbol of the Samajwadi Party.
The village is a part of the Kithore assembly segment in Meerut where minister Shahid Manzoor (SP) is pitted against BJP’s sitting MLA Satyaveer Tyagi while Babita Gurjar and Kushalpal Mavi respectively are fielded by the Congress and the BSP. Read full story here
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said he is not afraid of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or 'his enforcement agencies' and finds his 'arrogance' amusing.
The Congress leader said the BJP changed its chief ministers in Uttarakhand as they were all corrupt and 'replaced one thief with another'.
Addressing a rally at Manglaur in Haridwar district ahead of the assembly polls in the state, Gandhi said, 'Modi said in a an interview recently that I don't listen to him. He was right. I don't listen to him because I am not afraid of him or his CBI and ED.'
He said the three farm laws were withdrawn only because of the country's farmers and the Congress. --PTI
Speaking of RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary, BJP national president J P Nadda said, "Today, a leader did not cast his vote. It shows their dynastic arrogance. The power of democracy gives answers to such people."
As the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh polls kicked off Lakshmi Goswami, a resident of Jewar, said: “Private education is very costly and government schools are not up to the mark. I have three children and I end up paying over Rs 3,000 as school fees. My husband works as a helper in a shop and hence, the earnings are limited.” (From Abhinav Rajput)
The polling booth in Jewar witnessed over 40 per cent voter turnout till 2 pm. (From Abhinav Rajput)
In Mathura, long queues were seen as people waited to exercise their franchise. (From Amil Bhatnagar)
Wrestler Dalip Singh Rana, popularly known as The Great Khali, on Thursday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party at its headquarters in Delhi.
He joined the party in the presence of Rajya Sabha MP Arun Singh, MoS Jitendra Singh and Lok Sabha MP Sunita Duggal. “I’m glad to have joined BJP… I feel that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s work for the nation makes him the right PM. So, I thought why not be a part of his governance for the nation’s development. I joined the party after being influenced by the BJP’s national policy,” Rana was quoted as saying by ANI.
The first phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections witnessed a voter turnout of 35.03 per cent till 1 pm.
A first-time voter, Shubhangi ,19, is pursuing her final year at Dehli University's Dayal Singh College. 'I voted in favour of the party which can give us jobs not promises, stable economy instead of full-page advertisements and can ensure justice for all, regardless of the caste, creed and community,” she said. (From Amit Mehra)
"I'm a voter of Mathura. Right now, we're in Bijnor as there are just two days remaining for campaigning between the first and second rounds of the Uttar Pradesh polls. My wife voted in the morning. After campaigning ends here, I'll try to vote at booths open till 6 pm," RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary said.
PM Modi in Saharanpur rally: “Our government stands with ‘Har Majloom’, every Muslim woman who has been a victim of a crime. Those people are tricking Muslim sisters so that the life of their daughters is always lagging behind.”
Hitting out at the Opposition parties PM Modi said: “People have decided to vote for those who develop Uttar Pradesh. Those who keep UP riots-free, those who keep our mothers and daughters free of fear, those who keep criminals in jail, people will vote for them. A whole parivaar-vaad party is making fake promises. They had promised electricity but kept UP in the dark all throughout.”
As the first phase of polling was underway in Western UP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while campaigning in Saharanpur said: “Some constituencies in western UP are voting for the first phase. I'm glad that on such winter mornings, people are going to vote in huge numbers. I appreciate all these voters. BJP UP's ghoshna patra is a resolution for welfare.”
100-year-old Shasheekor casts her vote at a polling station in Dadri. (Photo by Gajendra Yadav)
Having contested many elections both at the state and the national level in the past over two decades, a small-time utensil seller has entered the poll fray this time against Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. Chhedu Chamar has filed his nomination as an independent candidate from the Sirathu assembly segment in Kaushambi district for the Uttar Pradesh elections. Maurya is fighting the polls from the same seat.
Chamar has in the past contested two Parliamentary as well as two Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and though he tasted defeat, he says he fights the polls out of passion. Chamar, 52, says he is not bothered about the stature of Maurya and asserts that "nobody is greater than Narayan (god)". A resident of Taibapur Shamshabad village in Kaushambi district, he makes a living by selling utensils house-to-house. During his 'political journey' in the last about 22 years, Chamar has contested 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections as well as and 2012 and 2017 UP legislative assembly polls. He has also fought the elections thrice for district panchayat. (PTI)
On December 15, 2019, a group of Aligarh Muslim University students gathered to express solidarity with students at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia who had faced police action during the anti-CAA protests. The gathering swelled and the protests turned violent, with police officials firing tear gas shells and lathicharging the students. As per the students, police also entered hostels and lobbed shells, while officials maintained that force was used only as reaction to a violent crowd. For many students, the violence at AMU still feels fresh. As Aligarh district heads for polls in the first phase on February 10, that plus the “persecution” of students that followed, the missing jobs and the second wave when Covid ran through the area are uppermost in their minds. Read More
Vijay Kumari, a homemaker and resident of Noida’s Sector 71, said that job security has improved in last five years.
Polling for the first phase of assembly elections in the state of Uttar Pradesh kicked off Thursday, with the state recording a voting turnout of 20.03 per cent till 11 am. No untoward incident has been seen so far.
Shivani Sharma, a student of Rajkiya Mahavidyalaya, said that health and women security were the main points she had in her mind while voting. (From Abhinav Rajput)
Voters at a polling booth in Ghaziabad. (Express Photos: Praveen Khanna)
As voting is underway for the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav tweeted, “New UP's new slogan: Let development be the ideology!”
Kapil Dev Agarwal, the sitting MLA from Muzaffarnagar, and family cast their vote on Thursday.
A cavalcade of about 15 cars stops in a narrow lane in a Dalit colony in Agra’s Brahm Nagar. It is a day of hectic campaigning for Baby Rani Maurya. She steps out of a vehicle, garlands some local residents and politely seeks their votes. Within minutes, the cars, adorned with the BJP flags, start rolling on the dirt road to make it in time for a public gathering in Akbarpur. Former Uttarakhand governor and prominent Dalit leader, Maurya is the ruling BJP’s candidate in Agra Rural, where the party dropped its sitting MLA Hemlata Diwakar to make way for her. She exudes confidence about her electoral prospects. Read More
With the arrest of the Samajwadi Party candidate for Kairana, Nahid Hasan, a day after he filed his nomination papers, the mantle of a long-running political feud here has fallen on women members of two families. Standing in for Nahid, a two-time Kairana MLA, is his sister Iqra Hasan, a 27-year-old law graduate from Europe, who says she is ready to take up any responsibility, including as a replacement for her brother. In the other corner is Mriganka Singh, the eldest of four daughters of late BJP leader and three-term Kairana MLA Hukum Singh. Read More
RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary will not go to cast his vote today because of an election rally he is leading, his office told news agency ANI. He is a voter of the Mathura region.
The Congress’s tallest leader in Uttarakhand, Harish Rawat has had to fight his way to the top in the party. Now, five years after a rebellion briefly deposed him as Chief Minister in 2016, the 73-year-old is firmly ensconced as the head of the Congress campaign in the state, with his men around, and detractors like Harak Rawat acknowledging his supremacy. Facing the onerous task of reviving the Congress from the big 2017 defeat, when he himself lost from two seats, Rawat speaks to Avaneesh Mishra at a party worker’s home in Haldwani. Click Here to read the interview
Union Minister and BJP leader SP Singh Baghel, who is contesting against Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav from Mainpuri's Karhal, casts his vote in Agra.
The Samajwadi Party, via a tweet, alleged that voters belonging to the poor class are being intimidated and sent away from polling booths in Kairana in UP's Shamli district as polling is underway for the first phase of the Assembly elections.
Polling for the first phase of assembly elections in the state of Uttar Pradesh kicked off Thursday, with the state recording a voting turnout of 7.95 per cent till 9 am.
On a day when Western Uttar Pradesh started polling, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be seen in Saharanpur at 11:45 am today as the BJP steps up campaigning across the state. The Prime Minister is also scheduled to address the 'Vijay Sankalp Sabha' in Uttarakhand at 1:30 pm. Meanwhile, BJP president JP Nadda is will be addressing three public meetings in Uttar Pradesh.
Noida records a voter turnout of 8.07 per cent till 9 am.
As Uttar Pradesh started voting, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, said: “Free the country of all fear. Come out, vote!"
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, asked the voters to come out and exercise their franchise. “It is the first phase of voting in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections today. I request all voters to participate enthusiastically in this holy festival of democracy by following Covid-19 rules. Remember - Vote first, then refreshments!” he tweeted.
As voting began for Phase 1 of the Uttar Pradesh polls started, CM Yogi Adityanath said, “Today is the first phase of the mahayagya of democracy. This ritual would not be complete without the offering of your invaluable vote. Your vote will strengthen the resolve of a crime-free, fear-free, riot-free Uttar Pradesh. That's why vote first, then refreshment.”
Claiming that polling has been peaceful so far, Jasjit Kaur, the district magistrate of Shamli district, said: “The polling process has started at all booths. Some complaints regarding the EVMs were received and we are replacing those machines and resolving the matter. No untoward incident has been reported from any polling stations.”
“If a girl like me is speaking out in public, she has already overcome the two most difficult challenges, of parivesh (environment) and parivaar (family). Random strangers can't shut me up,” says Neha Singh Rathore. The Bhojpuri artiste's videos listing problems of her state Bihar and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, amidst elections there, rattled the state governments enough to issue counter videos. It also made Rathore the subject of vicious trolling, which has got worse in the run-up to the bitter UP polls. Read More
Shrikant Sharma, the BJP candidate from Mathura Assembly constituency, believes this election will pave the way for further development in Uttar Pradesh. “These elections are no ordinary elections as they are associated with the development and safety of women in the state. In the last 5 years, we have laid the foundation of a prosperous UP.”
Sangeet Som, the BJP’s candidate from Sardhana Assembly constituency, believes the people of Uttar Pradesh will bring back the BJP to power for their developmental politics. “We are fighting on the agenda of development as we work with the mantra of Sabka saath, sabka vikas. The people of the state don't want to see the politics of appeasement,” he said.
UP Minister and BJP candidate from Mathura, Shrikant Sharma, offers prayers at the Govardhan Temple as voting for the first phase of Uttar Pradesh elections gets underway.
Confident that her party will retain power following the ongoing Assembly elections, BJP’s candidate from Agra Rural, Baby Rani Maurya, said: “I am confident that the citizens of Uttar Pradesh will vote in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party for good governance in the state.”
As the first phase of elections kicks off in Uttar Pradesh, Vikash Kumar, the SP of Agra, says: “Police and administrative officials have been undertaking checks since morning. 129 companies of central forces have been deployed, besides civil police and home guard. There is no booth in the district where CAPF isn't deployed.”
Visuals from Uttar Pradesh's Muradnagar area as polling for the first phase kicks off. (Pictures by Abhinav Saha)
People queue up at booth number 257 in Hapur as they cast their vote for the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections.
Polling in 58 seats of western Uttar Pradesh kicked off Thursday morning with voters lining up outside the booths across the 11 districts.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said if the BJP lost the Uttar Pradesh elections it would meet the same fate across India.
“We never ask anyone their religion or their place of birth because we are all Indians…If the BJP is wiped out from here, it will be gone from the country too. UP is the biggest state. You need to choose whether you will vote for the BJP’s lies or you will take everyone along and move ahead,” Banerjee said at a press conference at the Samajwadi Party (SP) headquarters here, with the party’s president Akhilesh Yadav by her side. Read more
In this constituency that borders the national capital and includes the native village of BSP chief Mayawati, a missing word on a statue of a 9th-century icon looks set to dictate who the people vote for on Thursday, which marks the start of elections in Uttar Pradesh.
On Tuesday, the last day of campaigning, BSP candidate Manbir Singh was hoisted onto the pedestal of the same statue, at PG College here, to slogans of “Gurjar Samrat Mihir Bhoj, amar rahein” and benevolent showers of rose petals.
“We will not allow anyone to humiliate our Gurjar icon. We will ensure that this stops,” he declared. The “humiliation” he is referring to, and repeated by all non-BJP parties in Dadri seat, is that the initial plaque for Bhoj’s statue, put up by the Yogi Adityanath government in September last year, did not have the prefix ‘Gurjar’. The government later corrected that, but for the around 2 lakh Gurjar voters of the total 6 lakh in the constituency, it was too little, too late. Read more
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday released the party manifesto for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, with promises ranging from a farm loan waiver to a Dalit home minister, sub-caste reservation for Most Backward Classes, a commission for Pasmanda (lower-caste) Muslims, holiday on Parushram Jayanti, five reserved seats in the Legislative Council for “farmers, craftsmen, weavers and ex-servicemen”, land rights for slum dwellers, a pension scheme for housemaids, an overhaul of the school syllabus and “restoring freedom” to the press.
Priyanka also promised that if a Congress government comes to power, cases registered against journalists would also be withdrawn, adding that it would “restore freedom” to the press. Promising to resolve the issue of stray cattle, she said compensation of Rs 3,000 per acre would be given for crops destroyed by the cattle. Keeping religious sentiments in mind, the Congress has also promised to build a “parallel road” along highways for “kanwar” and “ursa” pilgrims as well apart from promising to organize a Ganga Utsav. Read more
On the eve of the first phase of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday stated that the three farm laws were introduced for the benefit of the farmers, but were “repealed in the interest of the nation”.
“I have come to win the hearts of farmers, and did so. I understand the pain of small farmers. I had said that farm laws were implemented for the benefit of farmers but were taken back in national interest,” PM Modi told news agency ANI in an interview.
Speaking on the Lakhimpur Kheri incident that claimed eight lives, including those of four farmers, who were allegedly mowed down by an SUV of Union Minister of State Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra, Modi said the state government is working transparently in the matter as it has given its consent for the committee and the judge that the Supreme Court wanted to rope in for investigation. Read more