UP elections: For the voters, power cuts biggest election issue

Lucknow, Feb 8: Uttar Pradesh has been grappling with the issue of short supply of coal and lower supply from the central power pool leading to an acute electricity crisis in the state. The Uttar Pradesh assembly elections will be held from February 11 to March 8 in seven phases. There would be a three-cornered fight between BJP, BSP and SP-Congress alliance in UP.

According to a survey conducted for IndiaSpend by FourthLion Technologies, almost 40% voters in the state believe that power cuts are the state's biggest problem. While 20% of them said jobs, economy and development and 10% said it was the shortage of clean water.

Quoting Census data, the report shows that 81.4% of urban households used electricity as the main source, while as few as 23.7% did in rural areas.The survey also revealed that around 38% of the voters in the FourthLion-IndiaSpend survey said they face power cuts every day, while 16% said they were unaffected.

The labour ministry data show that youth unemployment was much higher with 148 of those between the ages of 18 and 29 per 1,000 people unemployed in 2015-16.

According to data provided by the World Health Organization shows that around almost half of the urban residents feel that air pollution is causing harm to their health. the survey shows around 46% of urban voters said the air they breathe is polluted comparing to the 26% of rural voters.

OneIndia News