Rajya Sabha: Cross-voting, clashes mar polls to 11 seats

SP candidates for Rajya Sabha Beni Prasad Verma (left) and Amar Singh arrive for the voting at the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in Lucknow. (Photo: PTI)

Cross voting and clashes marred Rajya Sabha elections to 11 seats in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday even though all parties managed to get their official candidates elected.

The Samajwadi Party candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha on Saturday include Mr Beni Prasad Varma, Amar Singh, Sanjay Seth, Sukhram Yadav, Reoti Rama Singh, Vishambhar Nishad and Surendra Nagar. All of them won in the first round of counting.

The Bahujan Samaj Party managed to get its two candidates — Mr Satish Chandra Misra and Mr Ashok Siddhartha — elected with excess votes. Mr Misra got 39 votes while Mr Siddhartha got 42 votes which means that the BSP not only divided its surplus votes among its two candidates, but also got outside support.

The official BJP candidate Shiv Pratap Shukla also won the election, but the independent candidate supported by the BJP, Preeti Mahapatra, had to bite dust. However, Ms Mahapatra managed to get votes outside the BJP too. She got 18 first preference votes even though the BJP could offer her only seven of its surplus votes.

Mr Kapil Sibal of the Congress was also declared elected, but he had to wait for second and third preference votes to defeat Ms Mahapatra.

Cross voting, again, took place in the Rajya Sabha biennial polls and five SP MLAs voted against the party line. These are the same MLAs who had cross voted in the Friday’s council polls. BJP MLA Vijay Bahadur Yadav voted in favour of SP while some Congress MLAs voted in favour of the BSP. “I voted on the basis of development done by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and I am ready to make any sacrifice,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha elections in Lucknow on Saturday were marred by clashes and accusations between Samajwadi party and BJP MLAs. Rebel SP MLA Guddu Pandit and his brother Mukesh Sharma alleged that UP minister Vinod Singh Pandit and SP MLA Tej Narain Pandey tried to snatch away their ballot paper.

The rebel MLAs told reporters that they were threatened with dire consequences by SP leaders and have sent their complaint in writing to the Election Commission.

Another BJP MLA Raghunandan Singh Bhadauria also alleged that SP MLAs tried to prevent him from voting for Ms Mahapatra. He said that he was manhandled by the SP MLAs.

SP MLA Shankhlal Manjhi, on the other hand, rubbished the allegations.

BSP Leader of the Opposition Swami Prasad Maurya said that the BJP was responsible for the unpleasantness that took place on Saturday. “The BJP put up an independent candidate and this is encouraging cross voting,” he said.

The BJP leaders were in a seemingly aggressive mood on Saturday after their second candidate had faced a humiliating defeat on Friday in the UP legislative council polls.