The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is heading for a big win in the biennial elections of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council underway on Tuesday.
But weeks after its record victory in state elections, BJP lost the key Varanasi seat.
According to NDTV, the BJP has already won nine seats unopposed.
The BJP candidate Dr Sudama Patel has lost the Varanasi seat. Annapurna Singh, the wife of local strongman Brijesh Singh has won the seat by a massive margin, as per reports.
For the ruling BJP, which came back to power with a two-third majority in the recently concluded assembly elections, it will be an opportunity to make itself the single-largest party in the House, and thereby enjoy a majority in both Houses of Uttar Pradesh Legislature.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who was among those who turned up early to exercise their franchise, had told reporters in Gorakhpur on April 9, "In the recent assembly elections, the BJP (like in 2017) won more than two-thirds of the seats and formed a strong government. After four decades, a situation has come when a ruling party will be able to bag a huge mandate in the Legislative Council too." There were 95 candidates in the fray and polling was held at 739 centres, according to the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer.
As many as 1,20,657 voters were eligible to exercise their franchise in these polls.
The local authorities' constituencies for which voting was held are Moradabad-Bijnor, Rampur-Bareilly, Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Sitapur, Lucknow-Unnao, Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Basti-Siddharthnagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Deoria, Azamgarh-Mau, Ballia, Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur, Etawah-Farrukhabad, Agra-Firozabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur.
These seats are spread over 58 districts in the state. Nine MLCs from eight local authorities' constituencies -- Budaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri -- have been elected unopposed.
Two MLCs were elected unopposed from the Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri local authorities' constituency, while one MLC each was elected unopposed from the remaining constituencies.
In the 100-member Legislative Council, the BJP currently has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party (SP) 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party four.
The Congress, the Apna Dal (Sonelal) and the NISHAD party have one member each in the House. The Teachers' group has two MLCs, while the Independent group (Nirdal Samooh) and Independents have one MLC each.
Currently, 38 seats are vacant. The voters in this biennial election are village pradhans, members and chairmen of block development councils and zila panchayats, and corporators in urban areas. MLAs and MPs also vote.
The Congress and the BSP did not field any candidate in the Legislative Council elections, making it a direct fight between the BJP and the SP, the principal opposition in the state assembly. Of the 36 BJP candidates, five are former SP leaders, who joined the saffron party ahead of the Assembly polls.
(With inputs from PTI)
In the elections for 36 seats of the local body’s quota of the Uttar Pradesh legislative council, the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) has managed to reach the maximum number by winning 33 out of these 36 seats.
The remaining three seats were won by independent candidates including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Varanasi, while Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) was completely ruled out.
With this victory, the BJP now has a majority in the UP legislative council as well having 67 members of a total strength of 100.
Counting was held for 27 of 36 seats on Tuesday while BJP candidates have been elected unopposed on nine seats earlier. The votes for these 27 seats were polled on April 9.
In Azamgarh, the erstwhile parliamentary seat of SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav independent candidate came victorious. In the Pratapgarh seat, independent candidate Akshay Pratap Singh backed by Raghuraj Pratap alias Raja Bhaiyya won defeating the BJP candidate.
Barring Azamgarh, Pratapgarh and Varanasi where independents have won, the remaining 33 seats have gone to BJP.
It is the first time in 40 years that a single party has a majority in both Houses. Earlier in 1982, Congress had a majority in both the Houses in the state.
With Tuesday’s win, BJP now has 67 members in the legislative council, SP has 17, BSP 4, Apna Dal, Nishad Party and Congress one each member in the UP legislative council.
Two of the council members belong to the teacher’s group while five are independent.
It may be mentioned that the ruling party always dominates in the legislative council elections under the local bodies quota in UP.
In 2004 during Mulayam Singh Yadav’s regime, SP had won 24 of the 36 seats while BSP had bagged 34 seats when Mayawati was the state chief minister in 2010. In Akhilesh Yadav’s tenure, SP had won 31 of 36 seats in 2016.
In the legislative council elections, this time, nine BJP candidates were declared elected unopposed from Lakhimpur, Banda-Hamirpur, Etah-Mainpur-Mathura, Bulandshahar, Aligarh, Hardoi, Sonbhadra-Mirzapur and Badaun.
In Tuesday's counting, BJP candidates from Behraich Dr Pragya Tripathi, Dinesh Pratap from Raibareili, Brijesh Singh Prinshu from Jaunpur, Ratanpal from Deoria-Kushinagar, Ramchandra Pradhan from Lucknow-Unnao, Angad Singh Barabanki, Vijay Shivhare from Agra-Ferozabad, Ravishankar Pappu from Balia, Dr KP Srivastava from Prayagraj, Dharmendra Bhardwaj from Merrut and Pawan Singh Chauhan from Sitapur have been declared elected.
Besides, from Gazipur, BJP candidate Vishal Singh Chanchal, Satpal Saini from Moradabad, CP Chand Gorakhpur, Shailendra Pratap Singh from Sultanpur, Subhash Yaduvansh from Basti, Prasnhu Dutt Farrukhabad, Rama Niranjan from Jhansi, Awadhesh Gonda, Hariom Pandey Ayodhya, Avinash Chauhan from Fathepur and Mahraj Singh from Bareilly have won.
In Varanasi, independent candidates Ms Annapurna Singh, Vikrant Singh from Azamgarh and Akshay Pratap from Pratapgarh have been declared elected.
