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45 per cent of polling booths declared sensitive in UP

About 54,000 of the 123,074 polling stations (102 million voters) have been declared as sensitive and hyper-sensitive in Uttar Pradesh where polling is slated in two phases on February 16 and 22.

As many as 28,529 polling stations have been declared as sensitive and another 25,465 as hyper-sensitive by the police, thus constituting a total of about 45 per cent of the total polling stations, official sources said.

A maximum of 1,169 polling stations of Hapur parliamentary constituency have been identified as hyper-sensitive and another 64 polling stations in that constituency as sensitive. This is followed by Ballia, the constituency represented by former prime minister Chandra Shekhar of the Samajwadi Janata Party. In Ballia, 887 polling stations have been identified as hyper-sensitive and another 146 as sensitive.

Interestingly, no polling station has been classified as either sensitive or hyper-sensitive in the Kanpur parliamentary constituency. So also with the Akbarpur (scheduled caste).

No polling station has been identified as hyper-sensitive in the Akbarpur, Aonla, Bansgaon (SC), Barabanki (SC), Bareilly, Bilhaur, Etawah, Faizabad, Kairana, Kannauj, Kanpur, Mathura, Mishrikh (SC), Shahabad and Sitapur constituencies.

In the last election, the Election Commission had insisted on securing a bond of good behaviour from all those who were suspected of trouble-making. As a result, over 1.5 million persons gave such bonds, ensuring unprecedented peace during the polling.

This time too, the Election Commission wants to repeat the strategy despite initial protests by the state government over the move.

In UP, Lucknow and Hapur are the only two Lok Sabha constituencies, where the voters number over 1.5 million. Three other constituencies have more than 1.4 million voters.

Seven constituencies have over 1.3 million voters. In 28 others, the total number of voters exceeds 1.2 million. Similarly, 35 parliamentary constituencies have over 1.1 million voters.

The state which sends the highest number -- 85 -- of members to the Lok Sabha has 10,19,34,412 voters.

UNI

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