Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha bypolls: Amidst allegations of rigging, dull polling in Rampur and Azamgarh

Polling in the bypoll for Rampur and Azamgarh parliamentary constituencies remained dull on Thursday with no enthusiasm seen among voters. The Samajwadi Party levelled serious allegations of rigging on the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party with the help of administration. In Rampur 37.01 per cent votes were polled till 5 PM while in Azamgarh it was 45.97 per cent. The SP leaders have accused both district administration as well as police for helping BJP candidates and said that voters were stopped from coming out to cast their votes. In Rampur SP legislator, Abdullah Azam said that there is no use of such an election. He accused that the administration has been asking voters in Rampur to show two IDs before casting votes though the officials refused doing so.

The SP leaders in Rampur alleged that their supporters were beaten in Swar Tanda assembly segments and not allowed to cast their votes. Azam Khan, former MP said that police has misbehaved with the SP workers and due to this, the polling percentage has been low. The police had to resort to lathi charge in Manpur Ojha village of Bilaspur at Rampur to chase the crowd, which had gathered outside a polling station.

However, the District Magistrate of Rampur, Ravindra Kumar said that polling was conducted in a peaceful manner and no untoward incident has been reported from anywhere.

In Azamgarh, the national executive committee member of SP, Arvind Singh wrote a letter to the election commissioner accusing the administration of not letting booth agents of his party go inside the polling station at Gopalpur, Sagdi, Mubaraqpur and Mehnagar assembly segments, He feared that there could be a large scale rigging in favour of BJP with the help of district administration. Azam said that despite all this the SP candidate would win from Rampur with a handsome margin.