Lucknow, Aug. 18 -- Fine-tuning its electoral arithmetic months before the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the Samajwadi Party has instructed its booth-level agents (BLAs) to add five new voters to every booth in an election which will be keenly contested and where every booth will matter.

According to official data, Uttar Pradesh has around 1.77 lakh booths across the state.

The SP's booth strategy rests on data from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when the SP-Congress alliance finished ahead in 224 of the state's 403 assembly segments.

The SP is pitted against the BJP, which has upped its game by appointing "booth palaks" and deploying "panna pramukhs" in the past.

Nevertheless, SP leaders claim they have the edge with the issue of...