Weeks after the conclusion of high-octane Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, political parties including the BJP and SP are headed for another battle for the biennial state Legislative Council elections due to be held on April 9.
Elections will be held for 36 seats vacant in the 100-member council for the upper House of the state’s legislature, Vidhan Parishad. A third of its members retire every two years. The last date for filing nominations is March 21 and the counting of votes will be held on April 12.
Currently, in the council, the BJP has 35 MLCs, SP has 17, and the BSP has four MLCs. Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal), and the NISHAD party have one member each. The Teachers’ group has two MLCs, while the Independent group (‘Nirdal Samooh’), and Independents have one MLC each.
The polls for the 36 seats belonging to local authorities constituencies within the state’s Upper House was earlier scheduled to be held on two different dates but the polls for all of them would now be held together on April 9, sources in the office of state’s chief electoral officer told PTI.
The election for the Upper House is usually held before or after the Assembly session. This time, due to the end of the term on March 7, the Election Commission had announced the polls in the middle of the Assembly session. Later, the council elections were postponed given the UP Assembly elections, reports IANS.
The BJP on Saturday announced its first list of 30 candidates for the UP legislative council and is expected to release its second list later. Top candidates in the list are former Congress MLC Dinesh Pratap Singh from Rae Bareli local authorities, former BSP leader Ramchandra Pradhan from Lucknow-Unnao local authorities and UP BJP general secretary Anoop Gupta from Khiri local authorities electoral college.
Interestingly, the BJP has also fielded SP leaders who had joined the BJP ahead of the Assembly elections in its recent list of candidates. C P Chand from the Gorakhpur-Maharajganj local authorities, Ravishankar Singh ‘Pappu’ from Ballia local authorities, Rama Niranjan from Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur local authorities and Narendra Bhati from Bulandshahr local authorities have figured in the list.
For the BJP, the upcoming polls will be a golden opportunity to emerge as a single-largest party in the House with a majority in both Upper and Lower Houses of the State Legislature.
Taking a queue from the BJP, Samajwadi Party on Sunday declared its candidates on 34 seats barring Barring Meerut-Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr seats, as they have been left for ally Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Among those given tickets included Dr Kafeel Khan from Deoria, Mashkoor Ahmad from Rampur-Bareilly, sitting MLCs Sunil Kumar Sajan, Rajesh Kumar, and Udayveer Singh from Lucknow-Unnao, Barabaki, and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri seats.
Meanwhile, the RLD has suffered a major setback after its state unit president Masood Ahmed resigned from the party on Saturday accusing leaders of the SP-RLD alliance of selling tickets and behaving in a dictatorial manner. Ahmed resigned days after its defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls and levelled allegations against RLD Chief Jayant Chaudhary and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav. “Akhilesh-ji gave tickets to whomever he wanted while collecting money, due to which the alliance was forced to contest elections without booth presidents,” he wrote.
Assembly Election Results
In the recently-concluded Assembly elections, the BJP had won 255 seats, while its allies Apna Dal (Sonelal) and the NISHAD party had won 12 and six seats, respectively. Samajwadi Party had won 111 seats, while its allies Rashtriya Lok Dal and SBSP, had won eight and six seats, respectively. Congress and the BSP had managed to grab only one seat each.
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