LS polls phase 3: UP records 26.12% voter turnout till 11 am

Lucknow: More than 26 per cent voters exercised their franchise in the first four hours of polling for 10 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.

The state witnessed 26.12 per cent polling till 11 am in the third phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha election.

While Agra witnessed 25.87 per cent polling, Aonla recorded a 25.98-per cent voter turnout, Budaun 26.02 per cent, Bareilly 23.6 per cent, Etah 27.17 per cent, Fatehpur Sikri 27.63 per cent, Firozabad 24.42 per cent, Hathras 26.05 per cent, Mainpuri 25.13 per cent and Sambhal 29.55 per cent, the Election Commission (EC) said.

Voting began at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm. More than 1.89 crore voters are eligible to vote in these 10 constituencies.

Prominent among those who cast their votes are the Samajwadi Party's (SP) Akhliesh Yadav, Dimple Yadav and Dharmendra Yadav in Saifai (Etawah) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates S P Singh Baghel and Parmeshwar Lal Saini in Agra and Sambhal respectively.

In Budaun, the villagers of Dhoranpur boycotted the polling. They protested against politicians for not paying heed to their demand for a road. District Magistrate Manoj Kumar said the issue has come to his notice and a sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) has been sent to the village.

Talking to reporters in Sambhal, SP candidate Zia-ur-Rehman Barq alleged that a circle officer doubled up as a BJP worker and snatched bags and voter slips from SP workers and detained them.

He requested the EC to remove the officer immediately.

Not a single vote was cast in three villages of Firozabad -- Nagla Jawahar, Neem Kheria and Nagla Umar -- as the villagers tried to draw the administration's attention to their problems.

It is an important phase for the family members of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.

SP's Dimple Yadav is aiming to retain the Mainpuri seat, which she won in a bypoll following the death of her father-in-law and party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Akshaya Yadav, the son of SP national principal general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, will try to reclaim the Firozabad seat.

Aditya Yadav, the son of SP national general secretary Shivpal Yadav, is making his electoral debut from the Budaun constituency, which was won by his cousin Dharmendra Yadav in 2014.

Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of 80 parliamentary constituencies among all the states. Polling in the state is spread across all seven phases from April 19 to June 1.

The counting of votes will be taken up on June 4.