SP sweeps MLC polls, BJP fails to win any

It was a happy Sunday for the Samajwadi Party that won 23 of the 28 seats in the UP Legislative Council, counting for which was done on Sunday. The Samajwadi Party already has eight seats unopposed earlier.

Elections through local bodies were held for 36 seats and the ruling Samajwadi Party now holds 31 seats that have catapulted it to a comfortable position in the upper house.

The BJP could not win even a single seat in these elections. The Congress won the Rae Bareli seat while the BSP won two seats and two seats were won by Independents.

Some interesting results in these elections include Varanasi where jailed mafia don Brijesh Singh has won the elections as an Independent, defeating SP candidate Meena Singh. Brijesh Singh was arrested from Orissa in 2008 and has been in jail since then.

Another Independent candidate Vishal Singh Chanchal won from Ghazipur defeating SP candidate Sanand Singh.

In Rae Bareli, Congress candidate Dinesh Pratap Singh won the elections. The Samajwadi Party had expelled its own candidate Mukesh Bahadur Singh, three days before the elections, paving the way for Congress victory.

The BSP won the Jaunpur seat and the Saharanpur seat, defeating SP and BJP respectively in these seats.

Former Prime Minister, late Chandra Shekhar’s grandson Ravi Shankar Singh won the Ballia seat on a Samajwadi ticket but the official SP candidate, J.P. Yadav, was defeated in Gorakhpur by rebel candidate C.P. Chand.

SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary termed the party victory as a victory of the work done by the Akhilesh Yadav government. He said that the elections had, once again, proved the growing popularity of the party as well as the government. He also rubbished the Opposition charge that the ruling party had misused the state machinery to win the polls.

“If we had done so, we would not have lost five seats,” he said.

BSP president Mayawati said, in a statement issued on Sunday, that the Samajwadi victory was a result of the gross misuse of state machinery. “These were indirect elections and the ruling party used the official machinery to ensure the victory of its candidates. In such a situation, the victory can be termed as ‘hollow’ and is certainly not reflective of the mood of the people. In the first phase of panchayat elections, it was the BSP that had emerged a winner,” she said.

The BJP levelled similar accusations against the ruling Samajwadi Party in the state assembly.