Phase 4 Lok Sabha Elections in UP Record 58.09% Voter Turnout, A Marginal Decline From 2019

The fourth round of the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 had an average voter participation of about 58.09 percent in Uttar Pradesh’s 13 seats that went to polls on Monday. With the exception of a few instances of fighting and malfunctioning Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), all thirteen seats—Shahjahanpur (SC), Kheeri, Dhaurahra, Sitapur, Hardoi (SC), Mishrikh (SC), Unnao, Farrukhabad, Etawah (SC), Kannauj, Kanpur, Akbarpur, and Bahraich (SC)—had peaceful elections, according to the state election commission.

The state election commission released data showing the following constituencies’ voter turnout: Akbarpur 57.66, Bahraich (SC) 57.45, Hardoi (SC) 57.57, Mishrikh (SC) 55.79, Unnao 55.44; Farrukhabad 58.97; Etawah (SC) 56.38; Kannauj 61.00; Akbarpur 53.24; Kheeri 64.73; Dhaurahra 61.91; assembly sub-constituency 136-Dadraul 53.31 percent.

“All thirteen Lok Sabha seats were peacefully filled by voting. Navdeep Rinwa, the state chief election officer, addressed the media late on Monday night. “Webcasting was arranged at a total of 14,126 polling places, which was supervised at all three levels by the District Election Officer, Chief Electoral Officer, and Election Commission of India,” Rinwa stated.

Webcasting videography was also set up at 5,420 voting places, according to Rinwa. 35,045 voters cast postal votes in the fourth round of voting, according to the groups that qualified (voters over 85, Divyangjan, Essential Services, and Polling Personnel).

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fielded two new candidates, Anand Kumar from Bahraich-SC and Ramesh Awasthi from Kanpur, in addition to repeating 11 current Members of Parliament (MPs) in the 13 Lok Sabha seats. In this round of the election, the Samajwadi Party—a prominent player in the opposition INDIA bloc—filed candidates for 11 Lok Sabha seats, while the Congress filed candidates for two seats: Kanpur (Alok Misra) and Sitapur (Rakesh Rathor).

Lakhimpur Kheri and Kannauj, two of these seats, had a high-profile electoral war during the fourth round of the LS Polls. Ajay Mishra Teni, a Union minister from Kheri whose son is a defendant in the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, was put up by the BJP. Akhilesh Yadav, the head of the SP, ran as the party’s candidate for the Kannauj seat.

Akhilesh Yadav said that there had been allegations of voting being interfered with in polling places on election day, and he accused the BJP of manipulating the results. “The goons fled the booths as soon as I got there,” said the SP head of Chhibramau in the Kannauj district.

VOTER TURNOUT DIPPINS
Rinwa said that the average voter turnout for these 13 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 Election was 58.75 percent, comparing the turnout with that of the Lok Sabha Polls.

Even while the average voter participation was somewhat lower than previous statistics, it has historically remained low. In the third round, which took place on May 7, the most populous state in the nation, Uttar Pradesh, saw 57.34 percent of voters cast ballots in its ten seats. This is a 2.58% decrease from the polls conducted in 2019. Prior to this, voter participation in the first round of the 2024 elections in eight parliamentary constituencies decreased by 5% when compared to the 2019 elections for the same seats. Phase-1 voting on April 4 saw 61.11 percent of voters participate, compared to 66.37 percent in eight seats in 2019.

Eight Lok Sabha seats had a similar pattern during the second round of voting, which took place on April 26. Compared to 2019, there was a 6.71 percent decrease in voter participation in 2024 elections. 55.19 percent of voters cast ballots in the 2024 election, compared to 61.90 percent in the first part of the 2019 election in eight LS seats.