All eyes in Uttar Pradesh were focused on Saturday when the seventh and final round of the seven-phased state assembly election would be accomplished with 1.82 crore voters deciding the political destiny of 962 candidates in 60 constituencies spread across 10 districts , largely bordering Uttarakhand and Nepal.
"As in the past six phases, polling will commence at 7 pm at each of the 18,957 polling stations, where 27,589 electronic voting machines were installed for the last round of the UP poll," State Chief Electoral officer Umesh Sinha told scribes.
While declining to divulge the number of security personnel deployed for the polling, he said, "Heavy police deployments have been made and we also have an adequate number of central para military forces to ensure a peaceful, free and fair poll."
However, sources in the state government confirmed that more than 100,000 policemen were on duty, besides an equal number of home guards.
He said, "Special security arrangements have been made at the 3388 sensitive or hyper sensitive polling stations."
The giant exercise involves as many as 86,000 state government employees, including 1,571 sector magistrates and 187 zonal magistrates.
Of the 962 candidates, only 182 belonged to national parties, while as many as 70 were from were from regional political outfits; the remaining ones were either from registered political parties or independents.
Significantly, this phase witnessed 50.9 per cent turnout at the last state assembly election in 2007, but it rolled down to 47.7 per cent at the Lok Sabha poll in 2009.
How the voters respond to Election Commission's sustained campaigning to promote more and more voting would be seen on Saturday.
