By-elections for the Milkipur assembly constituency in Ayodhya are underway, while Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that police were checking voters IDs to 'create fear' among voters, reported news agency PTI.
Akhilesh Yadav urged the election commission to immediately take action and remove them.
In a post on microblogging website X, Yadav shared a picture of a police officer checking the ID card of a person outside a polling booth.
However, Ayodhya Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Raj Karan Nayyar denied the allegations and said the person whose ID card is being checked in the said picture is a polling agent.
According to the Election Commission (EC), 29.86 percent of votes were cast till 12 am.
Samajwadi Party's Allegation
Akhilesh Yadav, in his post in Hindi, said that the Election Commission should immediately take cognisance of the pictures related to this news that Ayodhya police are checking the ID cards of voters in Milkipur, in which senior police officers are also involved.
"This is a democratic crime of indirectly influencing voting by creating fear among voters. Such people should be removed immediately, and punitive action should be taken," he added, as reported by PTI.
While talking to reporters, Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad alleged that the BJP wanted to win the bypoll by creating pressure on officers to influence and threaten voters.
Clarification By Ayodhya Police
Ayodhya Police has dismissed allegations made by Akhilesh Yadav, urging him to refrain from posting misleading tweets.
Refuting the SP's allegations, SSP Nayyar said the picture in question shows police personnel verifying the credentials of a polling agent and asserted that law enforcement officers are not checking voters' identification documents, PTI reported.
Milkipur Constituency
There are 10 candidates in the fray, but the main contest is between Samajwadi Party's Ajit Prasad and the BJP's Chandrabhanu Paswan.
The stakes in the bypoll in Milkipur, which is in Ayodhya district, were raised by Samajwadi Party leader 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.
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.
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 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Milkipur was the only assembly seat the BJP lost in Ayodhya district.
There are 255 polling centres and 414 polling stations for the election.
More than 1.93 lakh male, and over 1.78 lakh female voters and eight third-gender people are registered to vote for the bypoll. There are 4,811 first-time voters in the assembly constituency.
