A month after its thumping victory in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday swept the biennial polls to the state’s legislative council (local bodies) by winning 24 of 27 constituencies where polling took place on April 9. In addition, the party was earlier elected unopposed in nine seats -- taking its total to 33 of the 36 constituencies.
While the House has 100 seats, polling was notified for 36 seats. As nine Bharatiya Janata Party (BKP) candidates elected unopposed, voting was held only in 27 seats.
Results of the elections to 27 constituencies were declared on Tuesday by UP’s chief electoral officer AK Shukla.
Among the remaining seats, Independent candidates won two while the last seat was taken by the Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) party. The Samajwadi Party, the main opposition in the state, drew a blank.
The results take the BJP past the halfway mark in the 100-member UP council.
Before the polls, the BJP had 32 members in House. This is the first time in 40 years when any political party has achieved absolute majority in the UP council.
“The BJP’s highest tally in the Vidhan Parishad was 54 when the house’s strength was 108 before the hill state of Uttarakhand was carved out of UP in 2000,” a Vidhan Parishad official said while requesting anonymity.
{{/usCountry}}“The BJP’s highest tally in the Vidhan Parishad was 54 when the house’s strength was 108 before the hill state of Uttarakhand was carved out of UP in 2000,” a Vidhan Parishad official said while requesting anonymity.
{{/usCountry}}The BJP now has 65 of the 100 seats in the upper house. It has 273 (with alliance) of the 403 seats in the lower house.
The electorate in these polls were urban and rural local body representatives like village pradhans and corporators among others.
With these results, the BJP’s tally in the 100-member Upper House goes up to 65 since the party already had 32 members. The SP has 17 MLCs and the the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has four.
The only setback for BJP was its loss in Varanasi -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency – where the party came a distant third.
Independent candidate Annapurna Singh scored a decisive victory on the seat with 4,234 votes whereas the SP’s Umesh Yadav got 345 votes and the BJP’s Sudama Patel got 170 votes.
The BJP lost the Pratapgarh seat to Akhshya Kumar Singh of Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) party while the Azamgarh seat, considered an SP stronghold, went to Independent candidate Vikrant Singh, son of sitting BJP MLC Yashwant Singh, who was expelled from the party recently.
The 36 seats up for election come under 35 local body constituencies, spread over 58 districts. The Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri constituency had two seats, while rest had one seat each. UP is one of a handful of states with a bicameral legislature.
he Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Nishad party have one member each in the House. The teachers’ group has 2 MLCs, while the independent group (’Nirdal Samooh’) and independents have 1 MLC each.
A functionary aware of developments said the party is set to add more MLCs to the tally in June-July, when it could attain 3/4th majority. “The governor will be nominating 6 members to the Upper House in the next two months and all the nominated members are practically ruling party MLCs,” the official said.
“Then, the polls to 11 MLC seats under the assembly constituencies are due in July this year. It is pre-decided that the BJP will get 9 of these eleven seats while the remaining 2 will go to the SP,” he added.