UP Assembly Bypolls Results 2024: Counting for 9 seats to begin from 8 am on Saturday

UP Assembly Bypolls Results 2024: The Election Commission of India will begin the counting of votes for the bypolls to nine Assembly segments in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, along with the votes counting of Assembly elections that took place in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

According to the details, the counting of votes will begin from 8 am onwards on Saturday amid tight security arrangements, officials said.

The major contest in the nine Assembly segments in Uttar Pradesh is between the ruling BJP and Congress-SP alliance.

The nine constituencies for which the votes will be counted include – Meerapur, Kundarki, Sisamau, Katehari, Phulpur, Majhawan, Ghaziabad, Karhal and Khair.

UP bypolls 2024:

On 20 November, the polls were held amid allegations from the SP that the local police prevented voters from reaching polling booths.

The ECI took action against five police men while acting on a complaint from the SP.

Saturday’s results will determine the fate of the 90 candidates, including the highest number of 14 nominees from Ghaziabad and the lowest number of five candidates from Khair and Sisamau each.

Earlier in 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, the BJP won the Phulpur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan and Khair seats, while the SP secured victories in Sisamau, Katehari, Karhal and Kundarki. The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which was an SP ally then, won the Meerapur seat. The party has since switched sides and is now a part of the BJP-led NDA.

In the current Assembly, the BJP has 251 MLAs, followed by the SP (105). BJP allies, such as Apna Dal (Sonelal), RLD, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and NISHAD Party, hold additional seats, while the Congress and the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik have two seats each and the BSP has one.

Political tensions in UP:

The political tension has been running high in the run-up to the counting, as both the BJP and the opposition parties accusing each other of election malpractices.

SP president Akhilesh Yadav, on the eve of the vote counting, accused the BJP of manipulating the election process and claimed that the tactics of the saffron party are increasingly being exposed.

Yadav said that the vigilance of the INDIA opposition bloc supporters has uncovered the BJP’s efforts to manipulate the electoral process, leading to a decline in the party’s support base.

“The way our voters, workers, office-bearers and the media have responded to the BJP’s election fraud is being appreciated everywhere,” the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in a press statement.

He added that BJP’s reliance on corruption, propaganda and manipulation is the reason why its support base is shrinking. He alleged that BJP lures officials and leaders to indulge in corrupt practices, only to abandon them when things go wrong.

“The BJP is not a party that protects people, it traps them,” he claimed, urging SP supporters to remain vigilant during the vote-counting process. “We have won morally. Only the official certificate is pending,” Yadav added.

Reacting to these allegations, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya dismissed the SP leaders’ accusations as baseless.

He took to X on Thursday, the Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya dismissed the SP leaders’ accusations as baseless.