LUCKNOW: While moderate voting percentages at 51.89 % and 54.50 % were registered during the bypoll to Mainpuri Lok Sabha and Khatauli Assembly seats respectively, polling was sluggish in the Rampur Sadar assembly segment, where only 31.22% of voters had turned up to cast vote till 5 pm on Monday.
Polling had taken off at 7 am on Monday. The bypoll in the Mainpuri LS seat was necessitated after the demise of sitting Samajwadi Party MP Mulayam Singh Yadav. The bypoll in Rampur Sadar and Khatauli Assembly segments resulted from the disqualification of sitting MLAs Mohammad Azam Khan of SP and Vikram Saini of BJP due to their conviction, respectively.
While Azam Khan has been convicted and sentenced to a three-year jail term in a hate speech case in 2019, Saini has been convicted and got a two-year jail term in the Muzaffarnagar riots case of 2013. The bypoll to three seats in UP has been a straight contest between the BJP and Samajwadi Party as the two main contenders. The BSP and Congress had decided to keep away from the bypoll.
However, during the voting on Monday, both the contenders accused each other of disrupting the electoral process. Akhilesh Yadav accused the BJP government of misusing the official machinery. He alleged that the Rampur administration and the police were not allowing people to come out and vote.