Lucknow:
If the trend over six phases continues in the seventh and last phase of polling, to be held on Friday, Uttar Pradesh elections 2012 could go into the record books for the highest ever voter turnout in the state.
The sixth phase of polling in 68 assembly segments across 13 districts today recorded a very healthy 60.1 percent. The average voter turnout in UP so far in these elections is 58.4 percent. The state's earlier record was 57.13 per cent voter turnout across the state in the 1993 assembly elections. So far, 26 districts of UP have recorded a voter turnout of over 60 per cent. The ten districts that vote on Friday for the final phase would thus have to go against a strong trend to miss crossing the poll percentage of 1993.
In 2007, the voter turnout across the state was 46.58 per cent; so 2012 marks a 27 per cent increase in the six phases of elections held so far. In 2007, Mayawati's BSP wrested UP from Mulayam Singh Yadav - he had managed to gain from a mid-term collapse of a BJP-BSP partnership forged in 2002. The BSP became the first party since 1991 to get a majority on its own five years ago. Mayawati is now making a bid to become Chief Minister for the fifth time and also to become the first in recent times to win a second continuous term in UP.
Political pundits cite conventional wisdom to suggest that people turn out in large numbers to cast their vote when they want a change. In 1993, the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party had joined hands to contest the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and together managed to prevent the BJP from coming back to power in the state. UP voted in a hung Assembly in those November elections, held less than a year after the Babri Masjid demolition, but the Congress and the Janata Dal backed Mulayam Singh as Chief Minister.
Much has changed in UP in the last 19 years since. The BJP has lost much of its political equity, with its Hindutva plank withering some more every year. So much that the party relegated the Ramjanmbhoomi issue to the inside pages of its manifesto this year. The Congress, under the stewardship of young leader Rahul Gandhi, is making an attempt at political resurrection. The Samjawadi Party and the BSP are sworn political foes and have been for many years now - ever since 1995 in fact, when Mayawati pulled out of that alliance of 1993.
The sixth phase of polling in 68 assembly segments across 13 districts today recorded a very healthy 60.1 percent. The average voter turnout in UP so far in these elections is 58.4 percent. The state's earlier record was 57.13 per cent voter turnout across the state in the 1993 assembly elections. So far, 26 districts of UP have recorded a voter turnout of over 60 per cent. The ten districts that vote on Friday for the final phase would thus have to go against a strong trend to miss crossing the poll percentage of 1993.
In 2007, the voter turnout across the state was 46.58 per cent; so 2012 marks a 27 per cent increase in the six phases of elections held so far. In 2007, Mayawati's BSP wrested UP from Mulayam Singh Yadav - he had managed to gain from a mid-term collapse of a BJP-BSP partnership forged in 2002. The BSP became the first party since 1991 to get a majority on its own five years ago. Mayawati is now making a bid to become Chief Minister for the fifth time and also to become the first in recent times to win a second continuous term in UP.
Political pundits cite conventional wisdom to suggest that people turn out in large numbers to cast their vote when they want a change. In 1993, the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party had joined hands to contest the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and together managed to prevent the BJP from coming back to power in the state. UP voted in a hung Assembly in those November elections, held less than a year after the Babri Masjid demolition, but the Congress and the Janata Dal backed Mulayam Singh as Chief Minister.
Much has changed in UP in the last 19 years since. The BJP has lost much of its political equity, with its Hindutva plank withering some more every year. So much that the party relegated the Ramjanmbhoomi issue to the inside pages of its manifesto this year. The Congress, under the stewardship of young leader Rahul Gandhi, is making an attempt at political resurrection. The Samjawadi Party and the BSP are sworn political foes and have been for many years now - ever since 1995 in fact, when Mayawati pulled out of that alliance of 1993.
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