All arrangements for free and fair elections have been completed for tomorrow’s sixth phase of voting in the 14 Lok Sabha seats of Uttar Pradesh.
Elaborate security is in place with around 2 lakh security personnel, including over 230 companies of Central forces, deployed on election duty for this phase.
A total of 162 candidates are in the fray for the sixth phase to be held on Saturday from 7 am to 6 pm. Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur, Bhojpuri actor and BJP candidate Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua and SP candidate Dharmendra Yadav from Azamgarh, TMC candidate Laliteshpati Tripathi from Bhadoi and Congress candidate Ujjwal Raman Singh from Allahabad Lok Sabha seat are the prominent candidates in the fray in this phase.
Along with the 14 Lok Sabha seats, the ECI will hold a by-election to the Gansadi assembly segment in the Balrampur district.
State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa said here on Friday that polling parties have already started reaching their polling booths. Of the 162 candidates in the fray 146 are male and 16 are female. On the other hand, seven candidates are contesting the Gansadi assembly by-election.
Among the 162 Lok Sabha candidates, 23 % have criminal cases against them while 36% are crorepatis.
The seats in the sixth phase are Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Phulpur, Allahabad, Ambedkarnagar, Shravasti, Dumariaganj, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Lalganj (SC), Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Machlishahar (SC) and Bhadoi.
The CEO said there are 2.70 crore voters in the 14 Lok Sabha constituencies, of them, 1.43 crore are male and 1.27 crore are female.
There are a total of 28,171 polling booths in the sixth phase of elections, out of which 3,978 are critical. There are 17,113 polling stations.
To keep a vigil on the voting, the CEO said the Commission has also deployed 3 special observers, 14 general observers, 8 police observers, and 18 expenditure observers.
Over and above, 2,192 Sector Magistrates, 282 Zonal Magistrates, 24 Static Magistrates, and 2,833 Micro Observers have also been deployed.
To complete the election process, 6,952 heavy vehicles, 7,560 light vehicles and 1,21,246 polling personnel have been deployed. Over 34,145 EVM control units, 36,986 ballot units and 36,385 VVPATs will be used for voting in the elections.
Rinwa said given the arrangement of paramilitary forces/police forces during the sixth phase of elections, arrangements have also been made for air ambulance and helicopter for medical assistance in case of emergency. The location of the helicopter will be in Ayodhya on May 24 and 25 and the location of the air ambulance will be in Prayagraj on May 25.
He said live webcasting has been arranged at more than 50 per cent of polling places (14,480 polling places), which will be supervised at all three levels by the district election officer, chief electoral officer, and the Election Commission of India. Apart from the above, arrangements for videography have also been made at 5,057 polling places.
In the sixth phase, a total of 293 model polling stations and 86 women, 52 disabled, and 63 youth personnel-managed polling stations have been created.