Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Muzaffarnagar Sanjeev Balyan has alleged that ‘faces of women in burqas’ are not being checked in his constituency during the polling process leading to large-scale ‘fake’ voting.
With the first phase of polling underway in the country in 91 constituencies since this morning, the BJP lawmaker spoke to the media demanding a re-poll if the matter is not addressed. With 16 lakh registered voters of which five lakh voters are Muslim, Muzaffarnagar is held to be a communally-sensitive constituency.
The Muzaffarnagar seat is a high profile one with political bigwigs like BJP’s Sanjeev Balyan and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Ajit Singh contesting for it. The RJD has struck a pre-poll alliance on seat-sharing with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh and has fielded Ajit Singh from here.
The Congress has however not fielded any candidate here.
BJP leader Sanjeev Balyan had won the seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election after defeating BSP candidate Kadir Rana with a margin of over four lakh votes.
The last general elections were held in UP in 2014 after communal riots in the state in September 2013 where 60 people lost their lives.
This time around, the BJP candidate has once again tried playing the communal card.
