Preparations in UP are afoot for Prez poll tomorrow

Lucknow, July 18 (UNI) All preparation for smooth conduct of tomorrow's Presidential polls in Uttar Pradesh have been made.

Chief Minister Mayawati is not elegible to vote as she had resigned from the Rajya Sabha after being elected to the UP Legislative Council.

MLAs in Uttar Pradesh have the largest vote share (83,200) in Thursday's Presidential elections.

Former Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition in the assembly Mulayam Singh Yadav might also not vote following decision taken by the Samajwadi Party to abstain from voting.

The Election commission has appointed Mr DRS Chowdhury, joint secretary at the Centre, as an observer for the polling. BJP MLA Satish Mahana will be the candidate representative for independent Bhairon Singh Shekhawat while name of the representative for the UPA candidate Pratibha Patil is yet to be announced.

Assistant Returning officer and principal secretary(assembly ) R P Pandey said here today that the polling will be held tomorrow from 1000 hrs to 1700 hrs and all the eligible MLAs will have to show their Identity Cards before casting their votes.

He said altogether ID cards of 393 MLAs have been issued out of the total 400. Of the seven MLAs who did not collect their ID cards, six belong to the Samajwadi Party and the one left to the BJP so far.

UP legislative assembly has a total of 403 MLAs but three seats are currently vacant.

With each MLA having a vote value of 208, the state MLAs enjoy a total value of 83,200,largest in the country.

The ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Congress, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Jan Morcha and some Independents are supporting UPA-Left nominee Pratibha Patil. The BJP, along with JD (U) and some other MLAs is supporting Independent candidate and Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

The principal opposition Samajwadi Party, which is part of the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), has decided to abstain from voting, much to the dismay of the NDA. With 94 MLAs in the house, the vote value of SP stands at 19,552.

Despite NDA's efforts, if the SP manages to stand by its decision, UP MLAs will cast a total of 63,648 votes on July 19 -- provided all those not abstaining turn up to exercise their franchise.

Mr Pandey said the ballot box would be airlifted to New Delhi on Friday morning while the counting of votes would be held there on July 21.

UNI