SP WON BY 31SEATS OUT OF 36
The ruling Samajwadi Party has sweeped the UP Legislative council polls by winning 31 out of the total 36 seats with 8 being elected unopposed.
The polling for 28 seats, were held on March 3 where around 97.22 per cent of voters exercised their franchise among around one lakh voters.
The counting of votes started this morning at 8 am and as per the Election Commission the ruling Samajwadi Party candidates won in 31 seats including 8 unopposed. BSP candidates retained the Jaunpur and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur seats while the Congress retained the Rae Bareli seats, which is represented by party president Sonia Gandhi in the Parliament. The BJP surprisingly, drew blank in the elections even as their candidates were runners up in most of the places.
Interestingly, mafia don Brajesh Singh won the prestigious Varanasi seat as an Independent candidate from jail by defeating the SP candidate by a huge margin. BJP had not fielded any candidate from Varanasi, even as the seat is represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha.
In Ghazipur seat too an Independent Vishal Singh was declared elected after as he defeated SP’s Sanad Kumar Singh by slender margin of just 65 votes. In Gorakhpur-Maharajganj seat, CP Chand, the Samajwadi party rebel candidate who was expelled from the party has won the seat defeating the SP’s official candidate Jaiprakash Yadav.
The SP has won the seats of Lucknow- Unnao, Sitapur, Pratapgarh, Banda-Hamirpur, Agra-Firozabad Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri Etah (two seats) and Meerut-Ghaziabad. In the polling held on March 3, the SP candidates have won the seats of Moradabad-Bijnor , Rampur-Bareilly, Budaun,Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Hardoi , Kheri , Sultanpur , Barabanki, Bahraich ,
Gonda, Faizabad, Basti-Siddharth Nagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj ,Deoria ,Azamgarh-Mau , Ballia, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur,Etawah-Farrukhabad, Aligarh and Bulandshahar .
Meanwhile BSP president Mayawati said that the council polls shows the misuse of official machinery by the Samajwadi Party and it cannot be termed as a peoples’ mandate in this indirect elections.
However, Samajwadi party spokesperson and Minister Rajendra Choudhury claimed that this win has proved that the party was going ahead in retaining the power in the state in 2017 assembly polls. However, the party said that they have won 30 seats thus refusing to acknowledge the winning party candidate CP Chand from Gorakhpur-Maharajganj seat, who was recently expelled from the party.
“The result of the council seats shows that the people have accepted the policies and programmes of the party and the leadership of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav,” Choudhury said.
BJP on the other hand had raised the misuse of official machinery in the council polls in the state assembly and its leader Suresh Kumar Khanna maintained that money and muscle powers were used to garner vote for the ruling party candidates.
The ruling Samajwadi Party gained majority in the upper House this year in January when 34 members of the BSP retired following which the elections were held. After today’s elections the strength of the legislative council is SP-58, BSP -16, BJP-7, Congress -2, RLD-1, Teachers- 5, Independent-6 and vacant 5. The total strength of the council is 100
