Feature
About 8 key seats of western UP LS constituencies to vote on Thursday
Lucknow: Eight seats of western Uttar Pradesh will go the polls in the first phase of Lok Sabha elections on Thursday with BJP facing a tough contest in all the seats due to the alliance of Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal. The Congress is aslo seeking to put up a good show and is likely to cut into votes of both the BJP and the combined alliance.
A total of around 1.5 crore voters from Saharanpur, Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar — all in the western Uttar Pradesh will vote in the first of the seven phases in less than 24 hours.
They are almost 10.45 per cent of the total over 14 crore voters who will poll for all the 80 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
The first phase of Uttar Pradesh polling is crucial as any polarisation in the western part — as seen during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections — may help the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) get an impressive tally.
Three Union Ministers — Gen V.K. Singh (Ghaziabad), Satyapal Singh (Baghpat) and Mahesh Sharma (Gautam Buddha Nagar) are in the fray as is Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh (Muzaffarnagar) and his son Jayant Chaudhary (Bagpat).
Here’s a look at eight constituencies in Uttar Pradesh:
Muzaffarnagar: Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh, a candidate of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, is pitted against former Union minister Sanjiv Balyan in Muzaffarnagar, where Muslim voters dominate in all five assembly segments of this Lok Sabha seat. There are approximately 17 lakh voters, among whom Muslims constitute over 26 per cent followed by 15 per cent Jatavs and around eight per cent Jats.
BJP to face tough contest in 8 key seats due to SP-BSP alliance on Thursday:
The people of the region are of the opinion that it is not going be a cakewalk for any of the two leaders.
Ghaziabad: Union Minister V.K. Singh, who is seeking his re-election, is locked in a triangular contest with Suresh Bansal, the candidate of the SP-RLD-BSP coalition and Congress nominee Dolly Sharma, a young professional with a political lineage.
Gautam Budh Nagar (Noida): The fate of Union Minister Mahesh Sharma is at stake here in a triangular contest. The Congress has fielded Arvind Kumar Singh, while the BSP’s Satveer is the joint candidate of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.
Bagpat: Union Minister Satyapal Singh is seeking re-election from this Jat dominated constituency. RLD leader Ajit Singh’s son Jayant Chaudhary is contesting against him as the joint SP-BSP-RLD candidate.
Saharanpur: The BJP has repeated its outgoing MP Raghav Lakhanpal, while the Congress has fielded Imran Masood who had put up a strong fight in 2014, when he lost to Lakhanpal by about 65,000 votes.
The eight constituencies have 1,50,65,682 electors including 82,24,835 men and 68,39,833 women electors. Of these eight seats, Ghaziabad is the largest parliamentary constituency with 26,56,779 electors and Baghpat is the smallest one with 1,592,297 electors.
The data sourced from ECI website shows that in previous General Election of 2014, there were a total of 1,39,04,381 electors in these eight parliamentary constituencies. This means an increase of 11,61,301 (8.35 per cent) electors since then.
The State Scores Extra High on Gaming-Friendly Industry Index
Meghalaya scored 92.85 out of 100 possible points in a Gaming Industry Index and proved to be India’s most gaming-friendly state following its recent profound legislation changes over the field allowing land-based and online gaming, including games of chance, under a licensing regime.
The index by the UK India Business Council (UKIBC) uses a scale of 0 to 100 to measure the level of legalisation on gambling and betting achieved by a state based on the scores over a set of seven different games – lottery, horse racing, betting on sports, poker, rummy, casino and fantasy sports
Starting from February last year, Meghalaya became the third state in India’s northeast to legalise gambling and betting after Sikkim and Nagaland. After consultations with the UKIBC, the state proceeded with the adoption of the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Act, 2021 and the nullification of the Meghalaya Prevention of Gambling Act, 1970. Subsequently in December, the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021 were notified and came into force.
All for the Tourists
The move to legalise and license various forms of offline and online betting and gambling in Meghalaya is aimed at boosting tourism and creating jobs, and altogether raising taxation revenues for the northeastern state. At the same time, the opportunities to bet and gamble legally will be reserved only for tourists and visitors.
“We came out with a Gaming Act and subsequently framed the Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021. The government will accordingly issue licenses to operate games of skill and chance, both online and offline,” said James P. K. Sangma, Meghalaya State Law and Taxation Minister speaking in the capital city of Shillong. “But the legalized gambling and gaming will only be for tourists and not residents of Meghalaya,” he continued.
To be allowed to play, tourists and people visiting the state for work or business purposes will have to prove their non-resident status by presenting appropriate documents, in a process similar to a bank KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure.
Meghalaya Reaches Out to a Vast Market
With 140 millions of people in India estimated to bet regularly on sports, and a total of 370 million desi bettors around prominent sporting events, as per data from one of the latest reports by Esse N Videri, Meghalaya is set to reach out and take a piece of a vast market.
Estimates on the financial value of India’s sports betting market, combined across all types of offline channels and online sports and cricket predictions and betting platforms, speak about amounts between $130 and $150 billion (roughly between ₹9.7 and ₹11.5 lakh crore).
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Delhi are shown to deliver the highest number of bettors and Meghalaya can count on substantial tourists flow from their betting circles. The sports betting communities of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are also not to be underestimated.
Among the sports, cricket is most popular, registering 68 percent of the total bet count analyzed by Esse N Videri. Football takes second position with 11 percent of the bets, followed by betting on FIFA at 7 percent and on eCricket at 5 percent. The last position in the Top 5 of popular sports for betting in India is taken by tennis with 3 percent of the bet count.
Local Citizens will Still have Their Teer Betting
Meghalaya residents will still be permitted to participate in teer betting over arrow-shooting results. Teer is a traditional method of gambling, somewhat similar to a lottery draw, and held under the rules of the Meghalaya Regulation of the Game of Arrow Shooting and the Sale of Teer Tickets Act, 2018.
Teer includes bettors wagering on the number of arrows that reach the target which is placed about 50 meters away from a team of 20 archers positioned in a semicircle.
The archers shoot volleys of arrows at the target for ten minutes, and players place their bets choosing a number between 0 and 99 trying to guess the last two digits of the number of arrows that successfully pierce the target.
If, for example, the number of hits is 256, anyone who has bet on 56 wins an amount eight times bigger than their wager.
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