Lucknow, Sep 25 Intense lobbying has begun for the upcoming Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council polls in Uttar Pradesh, voting for which will be held on October 16 and October 23 respectively.
The lobbying is intense among the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), the two parties who will be able to ensure the victory of their candidates on the basis of their strength in the Assembly.
The SP will hold a meeting of its MLAs on September 28 to chalk out a strategy in this regard, chief spokesperson of the party Rajendra Chaudhary told PTI on Friday.
The BJP too will hold a meeting soon to finalise its candidates.
Asked if any meeting was held on Friday, a senior BJP leader replied in the negative.
“We will soon take a decision in this regard. Ours is a cadre-based party where all decisions are taken by consulting all the stakeholders,” he said.
The biennial polls to the Upper Houses of Parliament and the state legislature are crucial to both the BJP and the SP, which is the principal opposition party in Uttar Pradesh.
According to the Election Commission (EC), the Rajya Sabha polls will cover 10 seats from Uttar Pradesh and one from Uttarakhand, where the terms of the incumbent members end on November 25, along with a bypoll to one seat from West Bengal.
The notification will be issued on September 29, nominations can be filed till October 6 and the votes will be counted on October 16, the poll panel said.
Among the members retiring from Uttar Pradesh are BJP leaders Arun Singh, Geeta Shakya, Neeraj Shekhar, Brijlal, B L Verma, Seema Dwivedi and Hardeep Singh Puri, the SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Ramji Gautam.
The seat held by former deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma has also been vacant since September 11, when his resignation took effect following his appointment as the lieutenant governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Eight of the 10 outgoing Uttar Pradesh seats were held by the BJP, while the SP and the BSP held one each.
Based on the current figures in the Assembly, the BJP is set to win the maximum number of seats, followed by the SP.
Following the recent death of BJP MLA from Agra’s Fatehabad, Chhotelal Verma, the saffron party-led alliance has 288 MLAs — 255 from the BJP, 13 from the Apna Dal (Sonelal), nine from the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), six from the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and five from the NISHAD party — in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
The SP-Congress combine has 103 MLAs, including 101 from the SP.
The Jansatta Dal Loktantrik has two MLAs, while there are three MLAs who are currently not officially attached to any party, including minister Manoj Kumar Pandey.
Elections to 11 seats of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council will be held on October 23, the EC announced on Tuesday. The counting of votes will be taken up on October 27.
Earlier, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa announced the schedule for the 2026 biennial polls to five graduates’ and six teachers’ constituencies of the state Legislative Council.
According to the schedule, the notification for the elections will be issued on September 29.
The last date for filing nominations will be October 6, while a scrutiny of the nominations will take place on October 7. Candidates can withdraw their nominations till October 9.
Polling will be held from 8 am to 4 pm on October 23 and the counting of votes will take place on October 27. The entire election process will be completed before October 31, the CEO said.
The elections have been announced as the tenures of the members elected from these constituencies are scheduled to end on December 6.
The outgoing MLCs include BJP members Avneesh Kumar Singh, Manvendra Pratap Singh, Dinesh Kumar Goyal, Umesh Dwivedi, Shrichand Sharma and Hari Singh Dhillon, SP members Lal Bihari Yadav, Ashutosh Sinha and Man Singh Yadav, Independent member Akash Agrawal and teachers’ constituency member Dhruv Kumar Tripathi.
(PTI News)
