UP Election Result LIVE: Holi comes early in saffron 'UPsurge'

Whether Yogi Adityanath can stall Samajwadi Party’s charge to return to office in Lucknow, if AAP can finally manage to win Punjab after the failure in 2017, and whether Congress can return to its forgotten winning ways — these key political questions will be decided with the counting of votes, cast in the recently concluded elections to five states, on Thursday.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made at all 84 centres across the state to ensure peaceful counting of votes on Thursday. Additional chief secretary, home, Awanish Awasthi and additional director general of police (ADG), law and order, Prashant Kumar, told reporters that a threetier security cordon has been put in place at counting centres which will be manned by 1. 5 lakh personnel from the central para-military forces, state police and provincial armed constabulary.

Workers of Akhilesh Yadav’s SP continued to play poll vigilantes in the countdown to the UP vote verdict, raising a ruckus on Wednesday about a sheaf of purportedly old VVPAT slips being found in a box at Prayagraj’s Mundera Mandi and stopping and checking the district election officer’s car in Kaushambi before allowing it to enter a counting centre.

From ensuring vigil camps at strong rooms where EVMs are kept in every district of the state to issuing series of advisories on dos and don’ts for the party’s counting agents on how to monitor counting of votes, Samajwadi Party leadership on Wednesday remained focused on ‘every possible mechanism which could help thwart any attempts to manipulate the election results’.

: Sub-divisional magistrate Parul Tarar, who is also returning officer of Bareilly’s Baheri assembly constituency, was suspended on Wednesday after three unsealed boxes containing “unused” postal ballots were found dumped in a garbage cart. District magistrate Shivkant Dwivedi has also sought an “official explanation” from Tarar about the incident.