UP MLC polls: BJP wins 6, Samajwadi Party 3, with Lucknow and Varanasi still open
Two graduate seats are still undecided after a long counting stretch, and the Samajwadi Party says its candidates are ahead in both.
The BJP has won six of the 11 Legislative Council seats that went to polls in Uttar Pradesh, and the Samajwadi Party (SP) has taken three. The last two, the Lucknow and Varanasi Graduates' constituencies, were still being counted late Wednesday night, with SP candidates leading in both.
Here is how the results stand. Voting by paper ballot took place last Friday, and counting for the five Graduate and six Teachers' seats began at 8 am on Tuesday. The BJP took four Teachers' seats (Bareilly-Moradabad, Lucknow, Meerut and Gorakhpur-Faizabad) and two Graduates' seats (Agra and Meerut). The SP won the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates' seat and the Teachers' seats of Varanasi and Agra-Aligarh.
Most winners were sitting members who held on. The BJP's Dinesh Kumar Goyal (Meerut) and Manvendra Pratap Singh (Agra) kept their Graduates' seats, and Man Singh Yadav kept Allahabad-Jhansi for the SP. In the Teachers' category, the BJP's Umesh Dwivedi (Lucknow), Shrichand Sharma (Meerut) and Hari Singh Dhillon (Bareilly-Moradabad) all returned, as did the SP's Lal Bihari Yadav in Varanasi.
Two Independents from 2020 have now picked sides. Akash Agarwal, who won Agra Teachers' as an Independent, retained it for the SP. Dhruv Kumar Tripathi, who won Gorakhpur-Faizabad as an Independent, retained it for the BJP.
The two pending seats could swing the final tally. Kanti Singh is leading the BJP's Avneesh Kumar Singh in Lucknow Graduates'. Avneesh beat her there in 2020, when she contested as an Independent. In Varanasi, SP's Ashutosh Sinha is ahead. If both hold, the SP would rise from three seats to five and take Lucknow from the BJP.
The delay has turned political. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the Varanasi administration was under "contradictory pressure" from Delhi and Lucknow. He claimed the result in his party's favour was ready but the victory certificate was being withheld. He also alleged that counting was being slowed to keep a BJP defeat in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency from becoming national news. He urged the Election Commission to show it is impartial and told party workers to stay vigilant until victory is certified. Earlier in the day, BJP workers had protested, alleging irregularities in counting and demanding a recount.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath congratulated the winners in a post on X. Final numbers will depend on how the Lucknow and Varanasi counts end. Read the original report in The Indian Express.
