UP Municipal Poll Results Tomorrow, Expected to be Report Card on Yogi Adityanath Govt

Lucknow: The voting process for the Uttar Pradesh municipal polls is over and everyone is waiting for the results on Friday. These civic polls are considered a test for the Yogi Adityanath government in the state.

The three-phase UP municipal polls were marred by complaints of names missing from the voters list and EVM malfunctioning. 12007 wards of local bodies, including 16 municipal corporations, 199 municipal councils and 429 nagar panchayats were up for grabs.

Polling was held in 24 districts in the first phase. These include five municipal corporations, 71 municipal councils and 154 nagar panchayats. In the second phase, voting was held in 25 districts that included six municipal corporations, 51 municipal councils and 132 nagar panchayats. In the third phase, voting was held in 26 districts.

For the very first time, web-casting of 10% booths of every district was done in an attempt to monitor booth-level activity. Drones were also used at some sensitive and hyper-sensitive polling booths.

After a massive mandate in the Assembly elections, the BJP looks confident of a win in the municipal polls as well. These elections have become more interesting because the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) decided to contest the elections on their own symbol. The Congress also tried its best to put up a good performance.

As per Uttar Pradesh State Election Commissioner SK Agarwal, the average of three phases of polling was around 53.54%, out 7 percent higher the 46.2% in 2012. He said the voting in urban areas was not very enthusiastic. The lowest voting was recorded in municipal corporations, while there was good turn out in the nagar panchayats.

The voting recorded in the municipal corporations was 41.26 percent, while it was 58 percent in the was municipal councils and 68.30 percent in the nagar panchayats.

The counting process will begin at 8am on Friday and is expected to be completed in 7 hours. To ensure a fair process, the final randomization of the duty of employees will be done three hours before the counting starts, after which the employees will be able to know on which table they have to do their duty.

Election results will be uploaded from the counting site on the State Election Commission's website.