Months before the 2027 state assembly polls, the elections to 11 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council graduate and teachers’ constituency seats turned into a setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in its strongholds Varanasi and Lucknow, besides witnessing a close contest in Gorakhpur, even as the ruling party won six seats overall, while the Samajwadi Party got a boost as it bagged four seats and was leading in another.
In the results announced on Wednesday, the BJP’s tally of six was the same as in the 2020 Legislative Council election. The SP had won three seats and independent candidates secured two seats six years ago.
Party-wise results
In the current election, the BJP secured six seats: Meerut graduate, Meerut teachers’, Bareilly-Moradabad teachers’, Lucknow teachers’, Agra graduate and Gorakhpur-Faizabad teachers’.
The four seats the SP won include the Varanasi teachers’ seat (Lal Bihari Yadav), Lucknow graduate seat (Kanti Singh), Allahabad-Jhansi graduate seat (Man Singh Yadav) and the Agra teachers’ seat (Akash Agarwal).
The SP was leading in the Varanasi graduate seat (Ashutosh Sinha) by 9000 votes after five rounds of counting.
Also read: Decoding MLC polls: Who votes, how seats are filled
Setback for BJP in strongholds
{{/usCountry}}Also read: Decoding MLC polls: Who votes, how seats are filled
Setback for BJP in strongholds
{{/usCountry}}The BJP, which was pushed to the backfoot in the 2024 Lok Sabha election when its Uttar Pradesh tally fell to 33 from 62 in 2019, was looking to increase its tally in the council election to send the message that it had regained ground before the 2027 assembly election. The party had also hoped to use any gains to counter the Opposition narrative of dissatisfaction among the youth, the Ram temple donation theft controversy, upper caste anger over UGC guidelines and Opposition accusations of manipulation in EVMs. Ballot papers were used in this election.
The defeat of its candidates in the strongholds of Varanasi, Lucknow, Jhansi, and the Agra region came as a cause for concern for the BJP, which won a close contest in the Gorakhpur-Faizabad teachers’ seat in the region, considered chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s stronghold.
In Varanasi, represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha, the SP retained the teachers’ seat that it had won in 2020.
Also read: BJP wins 4 seats in UP MLC polls, SP makes gains ahead of 2027 assembly elections
The SP’s Lal Bihari Yadav, former leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council, won the Varanasi division teachers’ seat for a second consecutive term, securing 11,612 votes.
In the Varanasi graduate seat, Ashutosh Sinha of the SP was leading by over 9000 votes after the fifth round of counting was completed.
In Lucknow, represented by defence minister Rajnath Singh in the Lok Sabha, the Samajwadi Party wrested the graduate seat from the BJP. The SP also snatched the Agra teachers’ seat that an independent candidate had previously won before shifting allegiance to the BJP.
After the ninth and final round, Kanti Singh (SP) won the Lucknow graduate seat. She polled 56,905 votes against Avnish Kumar Singh’s (BJP) 39,778 votes, according to the returning officer.
The BJP’s Umesh Dwivedi held on to the Lucknow teachers’ division seat polling a total of 13,179 votes while.
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Results in other constituencies
The BJP drew solace from its performance in west Uttar Pradesh where the party retained the Meerut graduate and teachers’ seats, with its candidates Dinesh Kumar Goyal and Shrichand Sharma securing victories. In the Meerut teachers’ constituency, Shrichand Sharma (BJP) won with a total of 18,099 votes. In the Meerut graduate constituency, the winner Dinesh Kumar Goyal secured 24,929 votes, according to an official press release from the office of the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer.
BJP candidate Dr Hari Singh Dhillon retained the Bareilly-Moradabad division teachers’ seat, polling 21,672 votes, the press release said.
Manvendra Pratap Singh of the BJP retained the Agra graduate seat, securing 42,743 votes, the release added.
The BJP also retained the Gorakhpur-Faizabad teachers’ seat from where the party candidate Dhruv Kumar Tripathi was declared elected by securing a total of 16,790 votes. His victory margin was 307 votes.
The SP also bagged the Agra teachers’ seat as its candidate Akash Agarwal was declared elected, polling 14,046 votes, according to the release.
In the Bundelkhand region, SP candidate Man Singh Yadav retained the Allahabad-Jhansi graduate seat, polling 60,358 votes.
Polling was held on October 23 and counting of votes began at 8am on Tuesday in seven districts—Lucknow, Varanasi, Agra, Meerut, Jhansi, Bareilly and Gorakhpur—and continued on Wednesday evening.
Tense scenes were witnessed at the counting centres in Agra, Lucknow, Gorakhpur and Varanasi as BJP and SP leaders traded allegations of irregularities. Supporters of the BJP and SP clashed at the counting centre in Agra on Tuesday night.
Sanjayan Tripathi, the Samajwadi Party candidate for the Gorakhpur-Faizabad teachers’ division seat, boycotted the counting alleging irregularities.
Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said the BJP had largely repeated its previous performance but conceded that the party had hoped to win more seats.
“The BJP has repeated its previous performance. We were expecting to win even more seats but we did not win those many. We will look into this. The SP won where it should not have. We will introspect. We will make efforts to ensure that the BJP wins once again in the forthcoming elections,” Maurya said.
Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak said, “BJP workers reached out to voters across the state and have won seats. The INDIA alliance uses false rhetoric when they get defeated. BJP is going to form the third consecutive government in the state with full majority (after the 2027 UP assembly polls.”
UP Congress in-charge Rajendra Pal Gautam, reacting from Delhi, congratulated the winning SP candidates and said the results showed the INDIA bloc’s support for the Samajwadi Party. He described the BJP’s performance in the MLC elections as a significant setback.
“If the elections had been fair, the BJP would have lost all seats,” he said.
Samajwadi Party national president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday congratulated party candidates and workers. In his first public response to the results, Yadav struck a note of caution.
“We have to convey this victory to people peacefully through social media. There should be no noise or processions, so that BJP workers cannot infiltrate our ranks and vitiate the atmosphere or accuse us of creating a ruckus,” he said in a post on X.