The ruling BJP and the main Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh hurled allegations of foul play at each other during Wednesday’s by-elections for nine Assembly seats.

Mithlesh Pal, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) nominee from the Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar) Assembly seat, expressed fear that she would lose if fake voting was not stopped. The RLD is a BJP ally and Pal is an NDA candidate.

“There are unknown people who are staying in the madrasas of the constituency. They have deadly weapons. Police are helping them and not cooperating with us. Bogus voting is going on here. The police must verify the identity of the voters in veils to prevent this,” Pal told reporters.

“I have also written to the election officers about this,” she added.

Sumbul Rana, a Samajwadi Party nominee from Meerapur, dared the BJP government to conduct raids at the madrasas and arrest the outsiders.

“It appears that the RLD candidate knows she will lose and is trying to make excuses before the results. The people want to dislodge the BJP and will do so anyway.”

Ramveer Singh, the BJP candidate from Kundarki (Moradabad), said: “Samajwadi Party leaders have sent hundreds of fake voters to defeat me.”

Mohammad Rizwan, the Samajwadi Party nominee from Kundarki, said the “schizophrenia” of the BJP candidate was proof that the party was losing.

“The police are in control and they should identify the fake voters instead of terrorising my voters and preventing them from reaching the polling booths. The police have set up barricades at several places and prevented Muslims from reaching the booths. The police terrorised my supporters and didn’t let our 275 booth agents come out of their houses,” Rizwan claimed.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav urged his supporters to cast their votes at any cost.

“Those whom the police stopped earlier must try to reach the booth again. Keep making videos of any wrongdoing you see,” he was quoted as saying in a message to them in the morning when the first news of the police’s alleged highhandedness reached him from Sishamau (Kanpur).

Acting on the SP’s complaint, the Election Commission suspended seven policemen (three in Moradabad, two in Kanpur and two in Muzaffarnagar) for disrupting the election process and erecting barricades far away from the polling booths to force people to show their identity cards.

“We will not let you go to the booth without showing your identity cards,” a sub-inspector was heard saying in a viral video recorded by some SP workers in Sishamau.