Samajwadi Party national president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday accused the Election Commission (EC) and the administration of deliberately delaying the vote count in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council (MLC) elections and demanded immediate transparency in the process.
Yadav’s reaction follows AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi lambasting the Samajwadi Party at a rally in Kairana on October 25 where he asked Muslims to stop voting for SP and ask for their share instead. Tagging the Election Commission of India and the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer, he urged the poll panel to ensure fair and impartial counting. In another post accompanied by a video, the SP chief claimed that the BJP, the Election Commission and the administration had created a “three-tier curriculum of electoral fraud. Speaking to the media, he alleged that this pointed to a conspiracy to steal votes and claimed the BJP had been “caught red-handed. He noted that voters are instructed to fold ballot papers before inserting them into the box, yet some votes were discovered unfolded. Akhilesh Yadav also alleged the BJP was hatching conspiracies to obstruct the votes of Samajwadi Party supporters in new ways. He alleged that in areas with a high concentration of Samajwadi Party supporters, only a single voting machine is provided, whereas areas with BJP supporters receive multiple machines to expedite the voting process.
In a series of posts on X, Yadav said counting was being slowed down intentionally and that official round-wise results were not being shared with political parties or the media. “Chief Election Commissioner Shri Gyanesh Kumar should take immediate cognisance and make the results transparent,” he wrote. The SP national president also raised the issue of “unfolded votes” found in ballot boxes at booth number 97 in the Lucknow Graduates’ constituency, where SP candidate Kanti Singh is contesting. “Various conspiracies and schemes are being orchestrated to obstruct the votes of Samajwadi Party supporters,” he claimed at a press conference.
Earlier in the day, Yadav alleged that counting had been halted in the Agra Teachers’ MLC constituency even as the Samajwadi Party candidate was leading.
