UP elections Phase II: Two villages in Shekhupur Assembly seat boycott polls over contaminated water supply

By Gaurav Arora
Badaun (Uttar Pradesh) [India], February 14 : People of two villages-- Narau and Milaal Nangla-- in Shekhupur assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district on Monday said that they have boycotted the voting for the second phase of the state Assembly election over contaminated water supply.
Ujhani is the municipal board in Badaun district here.
While talking to ANI, Badaun Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) BP Sharma said, "Even before this call by a few villagers, we spoke to them. The water comes from Ujhani Municipality here. The villagers say that the drinking water is also completely contaminated. For this, a plan has been chalked out that has been prepared by the municipal council. We have also spoken to the villagers that we are making full efforts by engaging higher officials from the government level to solve this problem."
"We are trying that the villagers should exercise their voting rights. Efforts are still going on. Although the voting has been started, not all the eligible people have voted yet. We are still trying for that," he said.
The villagers have said that they will not vote until the problem of contaminated water is resolved. They claimed that many people have died and many are suffering from serious diseases.
Munna Lal, who lives in the Narau village, said, " The dirty water of the municipality is coming from the drain, due to which 1200 bighas of our land of the village have been wasted and the disease has spread in the whole village, many people of the village have become ill and many people have also died."
"We told many leaders but no one listened to us, because of this, we have decided to boycott voting, no one in the village will go to vote, many people of the administration also came to convince the villagers. We have made up our mind till our problem is not resolved, till then we will not vote, no MLA has listened to our problem till date," he told ANI added.
"The children of the village are suffering from jaundice and are compelled to drink dirty water. No one in the district is ready to get married in our village because the contaminated is contaminated. There are about 900 voters in our village and in the neighbouring village, there are around 300 voters," he stated.
Speaking to ANI, Ganga Devi, who lives in the village, said, "The problem of our village is very big due to which two of my children have died. I have been requesting everyone for the last many years but no one is listening. This problem has remained in our village for 20 years. Many ministers also came but no one did anything."
The second phase of polling for the state Assembly began today.
Altogether 55 Assembly constituencies are going to the polls in the second phase covering nine districts of Saharanpur, Bijnor, Amroha, Sambhal, Moradabad, Rampur, Bareilly, Budaun and Shahjahanpur.