Afzal Ansari and his supporters were seen having a heated exchange with a police officer

Afzal Ansari, the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party joint candidate from Uttar Pradesh's Ghazipur, has sat on protest outside the strongroom where the electronic voting machines are kept. He and his supporters claim that there was an attempt to take the EVMs out of the strongroom in a vehicle.

Samajwadi Party legislator Virendra Yadav and BSP lawmaker Triveni Ram are also sitting on protest in solidarity with the alliance candidate.

In a video, Mr Ansari and his supporters were seen having a heated exchange with a police officer. The officer is urging them to clear the area, but the leader and his supporters refuse to budge, claiming there was an attempt to take out a vehicle full of EVMs.

The police and the administration have denied Mr Ansari's charge.

Afzal Ansari is the brother of don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, who is serving sentence in Uttar Pradesh's Banda jail in connection with various criminal cases.

The SP and BSP, rivals in Uttar Pradesh, came together to contest the Lok Sabha polls to defeat the BJP in the state. The exit polls, however, don't paint a rosy picture. The poll of polls predicts 49 seats for the BJP. The Mayawati-Akhilesh Yadav combination is given 29 seats while the Congress is set to do no better than it did in 2014 - two seats, if exit polls prove correct.

The poll of polls, an aggregate of exit polls, gives the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) 302 of 543 seats and the Congress and its allies 122.