AYODHYA (UP), Feb 4: The final leg of a prestige battle between the Samajwadi Party and the BJP is set to unfold in the Milkipur assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh when voters line up outside polling booths to cast their ballots from 7 am onwards on Wednesday.
The fate of 10 candidates in the fray will be decided by the Scheduled Castes (SC)-reserved constituency’s 3,70,829 voters but the main contest is expected to be between Samajwadi Party’s Ajit Prasad and the BJP’s Chandrabhanu Paswan.
The stakes in the bypoll in Milkipur, which is in Ayodhya district, was raised by SP’s Awadhesh Prasad’s surprise win from Faizabad in last year’s Lok Sabha polls that came just months after the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
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Voting with start at 7 am and continue till 5 pm on Wednesday, officials said.
Polling teams are departing from Government Inter College for polling booths in Milkipur that have strict security measures in place, they said. There are 255 polling centres and 414 polling stations for the election.
“Webcasting will be conducted at 210 polling stations and videography at 25 stations. Micro-observers are deployed at 71 polling centers, with nine flying squads, nine static surveillance teams, six video surveillance teams, two super zonal magistrates, four zonal magistrates and 41 sector magistrates. Voting will be conducted with the assistance of civil police, PAC, and paramilitary forces,” they said.
A total of 1,92,984 male voters, 1,77,838 female voters and seven third-gender people are registered to vote for the bypoll. There are 4,811 first-time voters in the assembly constituency.
While BSP isn’t contesting the bypoll, the Congress is backing its alliance partner SP on the seat. Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) has also fielded a candidate from the seat.
The bypoll was necessitated when SP leader Awadhesh Prasad vacated the Milkipur seat after winning the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Now, even as the SP is looking to retain the seat, the BJP sees the election as an opportunity to avenge its loss in Faizabad. In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, Milkipur was the only assembly seat BJP lost in Ayodhya district.
On Monday, before the campaigning ended, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the BJP deliberately delayed the Milkipur bypoll, fearing a loss, saying the constituency has always supported his party.
Addressing a rally here in support of party candidate Ajit Prasad, Yadav said the election was a direct contest between “janta and shashan” (the people and the administration).
The alleged murder of a Dalit woman in Ayodhya has also become a point of attack for the SP at the ruling party. While SP MP Awadhesh Prasad publicly broke down over the incident more than once, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has dismissed his reaction as ‘nautanki’ or drama.
Adityanath even said addressing a rally in Milkipur on Sunday that some “criminal from the Samajwadi Party” could be behind the crime. Ayodhya Police arrested three people over their alleged involvement in 22-year-old woman’s murder on Monday.
The two parties had also sent out top leaders to campaign for the bypoll. Besides the chief minister, UP’s two deputy CMs — Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak — also campaigned for the BJP candidate. The SP sent its MP from Mainpuri and Akhilesh Yadav’s wife, Dimple Yadav, for a roadshow in Milkipur.
A police case has been registered against her and unidentified party workers for alleged violation of government orders, including for using more vehicles than permitted.
SP accused the BJP of harassing its leaders and workers “by filing false and fake cases against them”. (PTI)
