Lucknow, Oct 29 The BJP won six of the 11 seats in the Uttar Pradesh legislative council elections while the Samajwadi Party emerged victorious in five, including two seats in Varanasi, as results of two pending seats were declared officially Thursday.
Both the seats went to the SP.
The MLC polls were being seen as a prestige battle between the BJP and the SP ahead of next year’s state assembly elections.
According to the final results released by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer around 9 pm, BJP candidate Dinesh Kumar Goyal won the Meerut Graduates’ constituency with 24,929 votes, defeating SP nominee Pramendra Singh Bhati, who secured 12,073 votes.
In the Agra Graduates’ constituency, BJP’s Manvendra Pratap Singh won with 42,743 votes, while SP candidate Shashank Yadav received 27,734 votes before being eliminated.
The SP’s Man Singh Yadav won the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ constituency with 60,358 votes against BJP candidate Ashok Kumar Rathore’s 32,695 votes.
Kanti Singh won the Lucknow Graduates’ constituency with 56,905 votes, defeating BJP nominee Avnish Kumar Singh, who polled 39,778 votes.
In Varanasi, Ashutosh Sinha secured 55,046 votes, while BJP candidate Kedar Nath Singh received 35,114 votes before being eliminated.
Among the teachers’ constituencies, BJP candidates Umesh Dwivedi won Lucknow with 13,179 votes, Shreechand Sharma won Meerut with 18,099 votes, Hari Singh Dhillo won Bareilly-Moradabad with 21,672 votes, and Dhruv Kumar Tripathi won Gorakhpur-Faizabad with 16,790 votes. The SP’s Lal Bihari Yadav won the Varanasi Teachers’ constituency with 11,612 votes, while Aakash Agrawal secured the Agra Teachers’ seat with 14,046 votes. Their closest rivals, BJP’s Pramod Kumar Mishra and Hari Kishor Tiwari, received 6,597 and 9,783 votes, respectively.
Umesh Dwivedi’s closest rival, SP candidate Sushil Kumar, polled 8,371 votes; Shreechand Sharma’s rival, SP’s Nitin Tomar, received 4,858 votes; Hari Singh Dhillo’s rival, Haji Danish Akhtar, secured 3,996 votes; and Independent candidate Rajeev Yadav received 14,580 votes against Tripathi before being eliminated.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav described the BJP’s performance as a “double defeat” and claimed that the results have laid the groundwork for his party’s victory in the 2027 assembly polls.
In a post on X, he claimed that the BJP lost the Varanasi Graduates’ constituency both in the initial counting and the subsequent recounting, calling it a “double defeat of the double engine government”.
After the results were declared, BJP state chief and Union minister Pankaj Chaudhary said, “The BJP has retained its seats. Its vote share has also increased. The parties demanding ballot papers could not muster the courage to contest the elections.”
Chaudhary also rejected the opposition’s pitch for polls through ballot paper in 2027 and beyond.
Polling for the 11 legislative council seats was held on October 23 and the counting of votes began on Tuesday.
According to results declared by the end of Wednesday, the BJP had won Agra Graduates’ constituency, Bareilly-Moradabad Teachers’ constituency, Lucknow Teachers’ constituency, Meerut Teachers’ and Graduates’ constituencies, and Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers’ constituency.
The SP had won Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ constituency, and Varanasi and Agra-Aligarh Teachers’ constituencies.
Kedar Nath Singh conceded defeat in a social media post. He thanked voters for their support and said he accepted the mandate with humility and in accordance with democratic norms.
“Although we could not achieve the expected success in this election, your affection, cooperation and trust will always remain invaluable to me,” the BJP candidate wrote in Hindi.
Before the polls, the BJP held six of the 11 seats – Agra, Meerut-Saharanpur and Lucknow Graduates’ seats and Bareilly-Moradabad, Lucknow and Meerut-Saharanpur Teachers’ constituencies.
The SP held three – Varanasi and Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ seats and Varanasi Teachers’ constituency.
The remaining two seats — Agra and Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers’ constituencies — were held by Independents.
(PTI News)
