Voting underway for five legislative council seats in Uttar Pradesh

Voting for five legislative council seats -- three graduate and two teachers' constituencies -- is underway.

Polling for the biennial election in 39 districts of the state is scheduled to end at 4 pm and counting of votes will be taken up on February 2, the election office said.

The districts where polling is taking place are Prayagraj, Kaushambi, Fatehpur, Banda, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Jalaun, Jhansi, Lalitpur, Kanpur Nagar, Kanpur Dehat, Unnao, Bareilly, Pilibhit, Shahjahanpur, Badaun, Rampur, Moradabad, Amroha, Bijnor, Sambhal, Bahraich, Shravasti, Gonda, Balrampur, Basti, Siddharth Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Gorakhpur, Maharajganj, Deoria, Kushinagar, Azamgarh, Mau, Sultanpur, Ayodhya, Amethi and Ambedkar Nagar.

In total, 6.32 lakh people are eligible to vote in the three graduate constituencies -- Gorakhpur- Faizabad, Kanpur and Bareilly-Moradabad -- and of them 3.93 lakh are men and 2.39 lakh women.

As many as 5,392 people will cast their votes in two teachers' constituencies -- Allahabad-Jhansi and Kanpur -- and of them 3,505 are men and 1,887 women.

One observer each has been deployed in every constituency by the Election Commission. Besides them, 594 sector magistrates and 234 zonal magistrates have also been deployed.

Arrangement has also been made for micro-observers in all the booths and videography of the polling. A total of 4,941 polling personnel have been deployed to complete the election process.

Additional Chief Electoral Officer Ratnesh Singh said that polling is being held as the tenure of elected members of three graduates constituencies- Devendra Pratap Singh from Gorakhpur-Faizabad, Arun Pathak from Kanpur and Dr. Jai Pal Singh from Bareilly-Moradabad and two from teachers' constituencies Suresh Kumar Tripathi from Jhansi and Rajbahadur Singh Chandel from Kanpur block teacher is coming to an end on February 12, 2023.