Morning Pulse: Pradhans head for the Supreme Court as Akhilesh puts 16 lakh voters in the dock

Two fights over the same question took shape in Lucknow on Thursday: who gets to vote in Uttar Pradesh, and when. The pradhans whose terms ran out in May said they would ask the Supreme Court to undo the High Court's three-month deadline for panchayat polls. A few hours later Akhilesh Yadav stood at the Samajwadi Party office with a booklet alleging that lakhs of voters on the state's rolls cannot be accounted for. Both challenges aim at the calendar that leads to the 2027 Assembly election.

Since yesterday's Morning Pulse, the appeal question has a new, unexpected owner. Akhilesh Singh, national president of the Rashtriya Panchayati Raj Gram Pradhan Sangathan, told Amar Ujala that his body welcomes the part of the order that keeps outgoing pradhans on as administrators, but will challenge the three-month deadline. He told Aaj Tak that polls held before the backward classes commission finishes its district survey would breach the Supreme Court's own ruling on OBC quotas, and claimed the panchayat and Assembly voter lists differ by about 3.94 crore names. His group estimates the polls cannot happen before April 2027. These are his claims; neither report carried a reply from the State Election Commission.

The government itself has not decided. Amar Ujala reported that it is still taking legal advice and that senior Panchayati Raj officials were studying the order on Thursday. The OBC commission's progress is reported differently: Singh told Aaj Tak it has visited 40 districts, while Amar Ujala said data from only 10 of 75 districts has been made public. Either way, the commission's term ends on 20 November.

On the voter roll, Akhilesh released a booklet titled 'Samajwadi ECI Audit-1'. According to Amar Ujala, he said 87.56 lakh Form-6 applications for new voters were filed during the Special Intensive Revision, but the Election Commission has published details of only 71.38 lakh, leaving 16.18 lakh unexplained. He claimed SP workers had found three lakh more suspect entries, demanded that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign, and asked workers to sit at booths during the special camps on 17 and 24 October. ANI reported him saying the BJP was hiding behind the Commission. The figures are the SP's; the reports we read carried no reply from the Commission.

The BJP answered with ridicule rather than numbers. Panchayati Raj Minister OP Rajbhar wrote on X that the SP did not complain about the rolls when it won big in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, and said Akhilesh was preparing excuses for 2027, IANS reported via The Hans India. In remarks reported by ANI, he also brought up what he called a laptop scam under the earlier SP government.

The same afternoon, the SP gave the BJP a taste of its own Amethi medicine. Akhilesh inducted Gonda's Bhawani Bhikh Shukla, described by Aaj Tak as close to BJP leader Brij Bhushan Singh, along with his five sons, plus former Moradabad MLA Rajeev Channa, Akshay Maurya and a retired IPS officer, according to Aaj Tak and Amar Ujala. We found no BJP response to the joinings, and no fresh reply from the three MLAs who joined the BJP in Amethi on Wednesday.

Yogi Adityanath, for his part, took the fight to Prayagraj. Laying the foundation for 602 houses on land the government says it freed from mafia control, he said the SP brought mafia while the BJP brought development, Free Press Journal reported. ANI quoted him claiming nine lakh government jobs over his two terms and promising one lakh more in six months. These are his figures.

In Meerut, the court of Additional District Judge Jayvir Singh Nagar is due to announce sentences today for Ravita and Amardeep, convicted of murdering Ravita's husband Amit Kashyap and staging it as a snakebite, Amar Ujala and Times Now Hindi reported. In Lucknow, we found no report overnight that Shraddha Dubey has surrendered or given her statement in the Shiva Sharma death case.