The stage is set for a high-pitched electoral battle in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the Lok Sabha polls on Tuesday, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fielding eight candidates and the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) three for the 10 Rajya Sabha seats. The ruling BJP and the principal opposition SP have the numbers to send seven and three members, respectively, unopposed to the Rajya Sabha, but with the BJP fielding Sanjay Seth as its eighth candidate, a keen contest is on the cards in one of the seats.
Seth, an industrialist and former SP leader, joined the BJP in 2019. He had filed his nomination in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and other senior party leaders.
Voting for the 10 Rajya Sabha seats will be held on Tuesday and the results will also be announced the same day. The BJP and the SP are the two largest parties in the 403-member state assembly with 252 MLAs and 108 MLAs respectively. The Congress, an alliance partner of the SP, has two seats.
BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) has 13 seats, the NISHAD Party has six seats, RLD has nine seats, SBSP has six, Jansatta Dal Loktantrik has two, and the BSP has one seat. Four seats are currently vacant. The seven other candidates fielded by the BJP are former Union Minister RPN Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, general secretary of the party's Uttar Pradesh unit Amarpal Maurya, former state minister Sangeeta Balwant (Bind) party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh and former Agra mayor Naveen Jain.
The SP has fielded actor-MP Jaya Bachchan, retired IAS officer Alok Ranjan and Dalit leader Ramji Lal Suman. To get elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, a candidate needs nearly 37 first preference votes, an official said.
Meanwhile, Returning Officer Brijbhushan Dubey said, "A candidate will need 36.37 first preference votes to register a win. At present, there are 399 MLAs in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly."
SP MLAs Irfan Solanki and Ramakant Yadav and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) legislator Abbas Ansari are in prison. "Polling will be held from 9 am to 4 pm. Counting will commence from 5 pm and results are likely to be announced on Tuesday night," he added.
Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said that "all the BJP candidates will register a win in the Rajya Sabha elections." Chief whip of the Samajwadi Party in the legislative assembly, Manoj Pandey, had earlier said that all SP MLAs will be voting for the party's candidates in the Rajya Sabha election.
On being asked if one of the SP candidates may eventually fall short by one vote, Pandey said, "How will we fall short? Our people had contested (the 2022 UP Assembly elections) from the SBSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. And, basically, they are from the SP." Although Pandey exuded confidence that MLAs of the SBSP and the RLD will vote for the SP candidates, both parties have joined the BJP-led NDA.
Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) leader Pallavi Patel, an ally of the Samajwadi Party, had earlier said that she would not vote in the Rajya Sabha polls as she did not agree with the SP decision to field Bachchan and Ranjan.
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