Voters throng polling booths as phase 1 of UP assembly polls picks up pace- In Pics

Polling, which started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm, is going on peacefully, ECI said. Voting is being held in 58 assembly seats spread across 11 districts in the western part of the state in the first phase.

"Average 20.03 per cent polling was witnessed in UP in first four hours (7 am-11 am)," an Election Commission (EC) official said. Additional Chief Election Officer (ACEO) B D Ram Tiwari said polling is going on peacefully. "There were reports of a technical error in EVMs at some places. Those EVMs are being replaced," he said.

Agra has recorded 20.30 per cent polling, Aligarh 17.91 per cent, Baghpat 22.30 per cent, Bulandshahr 21.62 per cent, Gautam Buddh Nagar 19.23 per cent, Ghaziabad 18.24 per cent, Hapur 22.80 per cent, Mathura 20.73 per cent, Meerut 18.54 per cent, Muzaffarnagar 22.65 per cent and Shamli 22.83 per cent.

Nearly 50,000 paramilitary personnel from 412 companies of central paramilitary forces have been deployed at different locations to maintain poll-bound state's law and order as the election campaign for the first phase of assembly polls in western Uttar Pradesh ended on Tuesday evening.

As many as 623 candidates including 73 women are in the fray in the first phase and around 2.28 crore voters including 1.24 crore men and 1.04 women besides others are eligible to cast their franchise, officials of the state election commission said. The state ministers whose fate will be decided in the first phase of voting include Shrikant Sharma, Suresh Rana, Sandeep Singh, Kapil Dev Agarwal, Atul Garg and Chowdhury Lakshmi Narain.

The first phase of polling covers the Jat-dominated belt of western UP from where farmers had participated actively in the stir against the Centre's three agri laws in the national capital. These districts include Shamli, Meerut, Hapur, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar, Aligarh, Agra, Gautam Buddha Nagar, and Mathura.

The voting is taking place at 25,849 polling stations and 10,766 polling centres. In order to contain the Covid surge, EC has announced that not more than 1,000 voters are allowed to cast their votes on one polling booth and every booth will be mandatorily sanitized by the authorities.