Uttar Pradesh: Voting for 27 Legislative Council seats underway

By PTI

LUCKNOW: Voting for 27 seats coming underneath native authorities’ constituencies within the biennial polls for the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council commenced on Saturday.

According to the workplace of the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer, there are 95 candidates within the fray.

Polling will happen at 739 centres, and as many as 1,20,657 voters anticipated to train their franchise.

Voting shall be held for the next native authorities’ constituencies — Moradabad-Bijnor, Rampur-Bareilly, Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Sitapur, Lucknow-Unnao, Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Basti-Siddharthnagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Deoria, Azamgarh-Mau, Ballia, Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur, Etawah-Farrukhabad, Agra-Firozabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur.

These seats are unfold over 58 districts within the state.

Voting started at 8 am and can proceed until 4 pm.

Counting will happen on April 12.

Nine MLCs from eight native authorities’ constituencies have been elected unopposed.

The constituencies are Budaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri.

Two MLCs have been elected unopposed from the Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri native authorities’ constituency, whereas from the remainder of the constituencies, one MLC every was elected unopposed.

Following a powerful victory within the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the BJP has set its eye on turning into the single-largest get together within the state Legislative Council as properly by profitable a majority of the 36 Upper House seats.

It is a chance for the saffron get together to get pleasure from a majority in each the Houses of the Uttar Pradesh Legislature.

In the 100-member Legislative Council, the BJP presently has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party 4.

The Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD get together have one member every within the House.

The Teachers’ group has 2 MLCs, whereas the impartial group (‘Nirdal Samooh’) and Independents have 1 MLC every.

As many as 38 seats are vacant at current.

Addressing BJP employees every week in the past, Chief Minister Adityanath mentioned it was vital for the get together to win the 36 seats to advance his authorities’s development agenda with none hurdle.

“Of these 36 seats, the BJP has won nine unopposed. If the party wins all the 36 seats, you can assume that it will have a two-third majority in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council and have no problem in taking forward the development schemes expeditiously,” he mentioned.

The voters on this biennial election are village pradhans, members and chairman of block improvement councils, members and chairman of zila panchayat, and corporators in city areas.

MLAs and MPs are additionally voters on this ballot.

The Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party haven’t fielded any candidate within the legislative council polls, making it a straight struggle between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party, the principal opposition within the state Assembly.

Of the 36 BJP candidates, 5 are former Samajwadi Party leaders, who joined the saffron camp on the eve of the February-March state polls.

They are Shailendra Pratap Singh from Sultanpur native authority constituency, C P Chand from the Gorakhpur-Maharajganj native authorities, Ravishankar Singh ‘Pappu’, the grandson of former prime minister Chandrasekhar, from Ballia native authorities, Rama Niranjan from Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur native authorities and Narendra Bhati from Bulandshahr native authorities.

The Samajwadi Party has declared its candidates for 34 seats, leaving the Meerut-Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr seats for its ally the Rashtriya Lok Dal.

Prominent amongst those that have been fielded are Dr Kafeel Khan from Deoria, Mashkoor Ahmad from Rampur-Bareilly, sitting MLCs Sunil Kumar Sajan, Rajesh Kumar and Udayveer Singh from Lucknow-Unnao, Barabanki, and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri seats respectively.

Adityanath has lately give up the Legislative Council seat after getting elected as an MLA from Gorakhpur Urban seat.

With the demise of Leader of the Opposition within the Council Ahmad Hasan on February 19 after a protracted sickness, the Samajwadi Party has named Sanjay Lathar to the submit.

In the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the BJP has gained 255 seats, whereas its allies Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD get together have gained 12 and 6 seats respectively.

The Samajwadi Party has gained 111 seats, whereas its ally the Rashtriya Lok Dal has gained eight.

The SBSP, one other ally of the Samajwadi Party, has gained six seats.

The Congress has gained two seats, whereas the BSP has gained one seat.