The RLD chief's swipe at the ruling BJP came amid complaints of EVM malfunction
Youngsters and farmers are pressing buttons of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) hard out of the anger, Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary said in a swipe at the BJP today amid several complaints of EVM malfunction in the first phase of Uttar Pradesh polls.
"Complaints of EVM malfunction are coming in. It seems youngsters and farmers are pressing the button hard out of anger. I request them to take it easy and vote out of love for the (Samajwadi Party-RLD) alliance," Mr Chaudhary tweeted.
The RLD chief's swipe at the ruling BJP came amid several complaints of malfunction in EVMs and Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) from constituencies in Shamli, Muzaffarnagar and Agra districts.
Chief Electoral Officer, Uttar Pradesh, Ajay Kumar Shukla said such complaints are being addressed immediately. "Law and order is maintained at all polling stations and voting is underway peacefully," he said, according to news agency ANI.
The RLD chief also responded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "two boys dig" at Mr Chaudhary and Akhilesh Yadav, while drawing a parallel with the 2017 alliance between the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress and Samajwadi Party.
"Ye do ladkon wala khel to humne pehle bhi dekha tha (This game of two boys we have seen earlier too. They had so much arrogance that they used the words 'Gujarat's two donkeys'. And the people of Uttar Pradesh showed them the 'hisab'. And then there were these two boys and there was buaji also with them and still, they could not make it," he said in an interview with ANI.
Responding to the dig, Mr Chaudhuary said, "You can call me 'baccha' or 'ladka', I don't care. We're going ahead with hopeful and positive thoughts. We want to promote positive politics. Akhilesh & I want to work on the issues of employment, agriculture, much needed industrialisation in western UP."
The Uttar Pradesh election -- said to be the semi-final before the 2024 general election - began today. Fifty-eight constituencies in the crucial western part of the state, which was the hub of the farmers' protest against the three contentious farm laws, are voting today.
The region is seeing a four-cornered contest between the ruling BJP, the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance, the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Among the prominent candidates in the first phase are Pankaj Singh, sitting MLA from Noida and son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Baby Rani Maurya, former Uttarakhand governor who is contesting from Agra Rural.
An average voter turnout of 20% was recorded across the 58 seats till 11 am.