E-Paper
Uttar Pradesh legislative council elections: Four former Samajwadi Party leaders on BJP’s list of 30, no minister named
The biennial elections for the 36 out of 37 vacant seats in the Vidhan Parishad, the upper house of the state legislature, will be held on April 9 to pick MLCs. The counting of votes will be taken up on April 12.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday named 30 candidates, including four former Samajwadi Party (SP) leaders, for the Uttar Pradesh legislative council elections (local authorities’ constituencies). Three women are among the BJP candidates named.
The biennial elections for the 36 out of 37 vacant seats in the Vidhan Parishad, the upper house of the state legislature, will be held on April 9 to pick MLCs. The counting of votes will be taken up on April 12.
The voters in this election are village pradhans, members and chairpersons of block development councils and zila panchayats, besides corporators of civic bodies.
So far, the BJP has not fielded any of the 10 ministers, who failed to win the recently concluded UP assembly elections. The BJP is still to name six more candidates for the total 36 vacancies in the legislative council.
“Maybe one or two, or maybe none at all. There aren’t many chances of ministers who lost the UP assembly elections being fielded in these polls,” said a BJP leader. He made the comment when asked if ministers who lost the assembly elections could be fielded for legislative council polls.
A good show in the MLC polls would ensure the BJP’s domination in the upper house of the state legislature.
Dinesh Pratap Singh, who was the Congress MLC from Rae Bareli local authorities’ constituency, has expectedly been named the BJP candidate from the same seat.
After joining the BJP in 2018, Singh had contested as the BJP candidate against Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in the Lok Sabha election in Rae Bareli.
Former Samajwadi Party leaders Narendra Bhati, CP Chand, Rama Niranjan and Ravi Shankar ‘Pappu’, have been named BJP candidates this time.
Chand has been fielded from the Gorakhpur-Maharajganj local authorities’ constituency, Niranjan from Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur and Ravi Shankar ‘Pappu’ from Ballia. UP BJP youth wing chief Pranshu Dutt Dwivedi has been named the party candidate from the Etawah-Farrukhabad local authorities’ constituency.
The BJP has given the party ticket to Ramchandra Pradhan, a former Bahujan Samaj Party leader, who had joined the BJP several years back, for the Lucknow-Unnao local authorities’ seat.
According to the UP Vidhan Parishad official website, the BJP has 35 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party 17 and the BSP four MLCs at present in the 100-member UP legislative council.
The Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD party have one member each in it.
The Teachers’ group has two MLCs while the Independent Group (Nirdal Samooh) and independents have one MLC each.
UP Vidhan Parishad’s 36 seats fell vacant on March 7 after the expiry of terms of its members. The 37th seat fell vacant following the death of the Leader of Opposition Ahmad Hassan, belonging to the Samajwadi Party, after a prolonged illness.
