Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday alleged that the police were checking the identity cards of voters in Uttar Pradesh’s Milkipur, where polling is underway for the Assembly bye-election.

“The Election Commission should immediately take cognisance of the pictures related to this news that Ayodhya police is checking the ID cards of voters in Milkipur, in which senior police officers are also involved,” Yadav said on the social media platform X with a photograph of the alleged incident.

“This is a democratic crime of indirectly influencing voting by creating fear among voters,” he added. “Such people should be removed immediately and punitive action should be taken.”

The Ayodhya Police rejected the allegations and said that no identity cards were being checked by their personnel.

“Senior officials have visited the booths and checked all the booth agents and verified their ID cards,” the police said on X. “No voter’s ID is being checked. Another photo of the said agent is attached. The person seen in the photo [posted by Yadav] is not a voter but a booth agent.”

Voting for the Milkipur Assembly constituency began at 7 am across 414 polling stations. The bye-election was necessitated after Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad resigned as the MLA after being elected to the Lok Sabha in June. The counting of votes will also take place on Saturday.

On Wednesday, Prasad alleged that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the state was “influencing” the elections, ANI reported. “I have received information that our party workers are being chased away from the polling booths,” the news agency quoted Prasad as saying.

In a series of posts on X, the Samajwadi Party also claimed that voters were being prevented from casting their ballots from certain booth and that they had received details about “fake voting” by BJP leaders in several other locations.

“Election Commission should take cognisance and ensure fair voting,” the party said.