Lucknow. Voting began on Saturday morning at 8 am on 27 seats of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council. According to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh, 95 candidates are trying their luck in the fray. According to the office, voting will be held at 739 polling stations in the Legislative Council elections, in which 1,20,657 voters are expected to exercise their franchise.
Voting will be held till 4 pm. According to the election office, the local body constituencies for which polling is being held are 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-Farukhabad, Agra-Firozabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur are included. Huh. These 27 seats are in 58 districts.
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At the same time, nine Legislative Council Members (MLCs) have been elected unopposed from the constituencies of eight local authorities. There is a direct contest between the SP and the BJP in the Legislative Council elections, as the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party have not fielded any candidate. However, some independent candidates are in the fray.
The counting of votes will take place on April 12. The 36 seats of the Upper House of the Uttar Pradesh Legislature are spread over 35 local officials’ constituencies. Addressing the party workers on April 1, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said, “At present, Legislative Council elections are being held in 36 seats of the state. The BJP has won nine of these seats unopposed. If all these 36 seats fall in the bag of BJP, then assume that more than two-thirds of the party will have members in the Legislative Council.”
He had said that after getting more than two-thirds majority in the Legislative Council after the assembly, the BJP would not face any kind of obstacle in taking forward the development works and welfare schemes related to the poor in the state. In the Legislative Council elections of the local administrative area, the village head, the members of the village panchayat, the chairman and members of the block development councils, the district panchayat president and the councilors of the urban bodies are the voters. Apart from this, MLAs and MPs also vote in this election. At present, BJP has 35, while SP has 17, BSP four and Congress, Apna Dal and Nishad Party have one member each in the state’s 100-member Legislative Council. At the same time, two of the teachers’ team, while an independent member is also present in the Legislative Council.
36 seats of the State Legislative Council had fallen vacant on March 7 due to the expiry of the term of the concerned members. At the same time, the 37th seat of the House fell vacant due to the death of Leader of Opposition Ahmed Hassan. Of the 36 candidates fielded by the BJP, five are former Samajwadi Party leaders who had joined the saffron party ahead of the February-March assembly elections.
These include Shailendra Pratap Singh from Sultanpur Local Authority constituency, CP Chand from Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Ravi Shankar Singh ‘Pappu’ from Ballia, Ram Niranjan from Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur and Narendra Bhati from Bulandshahr. Ravi Shankar Singh ‘Pappu’ is the grandson of former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar. Apart from Meerut-Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr seats (which have been left for ally Rashtriya Lok Dal), the Samajwadi Party has fielded candidates in all the remaining 34 seats. Ticket winners include Dr. Kafeel Khan from Deoria, Mashkoor Ahmed from Rampur-Bareilly, Sunil Kumar Sajan from Lucknow-Unnao, Rajesh Kumar from Barabanki and Udayveer Singh from Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri seat.