SP wrests teachers’ seat from BJP in legislative council poll in Varanasi

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a setback in its stronghold Varanasi on Friday as the Samajwadi Party wrested the teachers’ constituency seat from it in the election to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council.

Varanasi is also the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Samajwadi Party candidate Lal Bihari Yadav won the Varanasi division teachers’ seat defeating Dr Pramod Kumar Mishra of the Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shikshak Sangh (Om Prakash Sharma group) and pushing incumbent MLC Chetnarayan Singh of the BJP to the third place. Chetnarayan Singh had won the seat in the last two elections.

Assistant election officer Navneet Singh Chahal handed over the certificate to Lal Bihari declaring him the winner of the Varanasi teachers’ constituency seat.

While Lal Bihari polled 7,766 votes, Mishra got 6,830 votes. BJP candidate Chetnarayan Singh polled 4,858 votes. The Varanasi division teachers’ seat had witnessed 68.83% polling on December 1.

Among the other candidates, Krishna Mohan Yadav polled 1,621 votes, Dr Jitendra Singh Patel 783, Dharmendra Kumar 191, Dr Fareed Ansari 169, Dr Brijesh 530, Rajni 527, Ranesh Singh 1973, Rajendra Pratap Singh 1,444 and Sanjay Kumar Singh 1,001 votes.

The counting of votes began in Varanasi on Thursday morning. A total of 12 candidates tried their luck for the teachers’ constituency here.

Legislative Council elections were held for a total of 11 seats (six teachers’ constituencies and five graduates’ constituencies) across Uttar Pradesh on December 1.

Voters for these polls are spread across several districts and many assembly segments. In teachers’ constituencies, government teachers of class 10 and above register themselves as voters while in graduate constituency polls, all graduates who graduated three years before the polling date, are voters.