BJP sweeps MLC elections in UP

Lucknow, Apr 12: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh is heading to a clean sweep in the biennial MLC polls (local bodies) as the counting of votes for the 27 seats the voting for which was held on Saturday is underway.

 

 

 

Though chief electoral officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said that the authorized election results would be announced by evening only, the advance trends available from districts show the BJP is leading on majority of 27 seats while independents may also win 2-3 seats. The Samajwadi Party (SP), the principal opposition party, may not open its account.

 

 

 

The BJP has already won nine of the 36 seats with its candidates having been declared unopposed before the voting to the remaining 27 seats was held on Saturday with over 98 per cent voter turnout. The 98.11 per cent of 1,20,657 voters, who exercised their franchise in these polls included village pradhans, members and chairpersons of the kshetra and zila panchayats, corporators/nagar palika members. There were 95 candidates in the fray. With this the BJP appears all set to get majority in the 100-member upper house (Vidhan Parishad) too after it got thumping majority in the lower house following announcement of results for the assembly elections last month. In the 100-member Upper House, currently the BJP has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party four. The Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and 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. The BJP tally in the parishad may now double, making it the single largest party in the upper house after a very long time.

 

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Twenty-seven seats for which voting was held on Saturday are Moradabad-Bijnor, Rampur-Bareilly, Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Sitapur, Lucknow-Unnao, Raebareli, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Bast-Siddhartnagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Deoria, Azamgarh-Mau, Balia, Ghazipur, Janupur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur, Etawah-Farrukhabad, Agra-Firozabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur. In eight constituencies, nine candidates were elected unopposed: Badaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr, Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri while two candidates were elected unopposed from Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri constituency while one each was elected from seven others.