BJP wins three MLC seats in UP, loses Varanasi to SP candidate

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party won three of the six Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council seats for which results were announced on Friday.

While the BJP managed to end the decades-long dominance of eight-time MLC Om Prakash Sharma in Meerut, it finished in the third place in Varanasi where Samajwadi Party’s Lal Bihari Yadav won.

BJP’s Umesh Dwivedi won the Lucknow division teachers’ seat, Shrichand Sharma the Meerut seat and Hari Singh Dhillon the Bareilly-Moradabad seat, the results showed.

Akash Agrawal and Dhruv Kumar Tripathi, both independent candidates, won the Agra and Gorakhpur teachers’ seats, respectively.

This is first time that the BJP contested the Vidhan Parishad polls to the teachers’ constituencies.

The biennial elections to all the 11 seats were held on December 1 after hectic campaigning by candidates and their parties. A total of 199 candidates were in the fray.

The counting for the 11 seats started on Thursday and the results of the remaining are likely to be announced by Saturday, officials said.

The BJP, SP, Congress and teachers’ associations contested the polls.

Of the 11 seats, five are graduates’ constituencies and six teachers’ constituencies.

The term of office of the MLCs from these constituencies expired on May 6.

(With agency inputs)