MLC Elections in UP: Next month’s elections have parties geared up, SP takes the lead in 11 seats

Last updated on February 20th, 2023 at 01:25 pm

MLC (Members of Legislative Council) elections are scheduled for next month in Uttar Pradesh. Notifications regarding 11 Legislative Council seats are out now with all political parties preparing for the elections. 

UP Legislative Council has 100 members. Out of this the maximum, 52 seats, are in Samajwadi Party (SP) account. The current ruling party BJP has 19 seats. BSP has 8 while Congress has only 2 seats, out of which one member Dinesh Kumar Singh has joined BJP.

Overall, there are still 14 vacant seats left in the state’s Legislative Council. Polls have been released on 11 seats of Teacher and Graduate constituencies. Polling is scheduled for December. Currently the rival parties, SP and BJP are working on increasing their seat numbers in the Rajya Sabha – these seats are directly contested from votes of recognized colleges graduates and regular teachers. 

In the process, SP went ahead and has declared its 11 candidates. They include sitting MLA from Agra Aseem Yadav, Shamshad Ali from Meerut, Ashutosh Sinha from Varanasi, Ram Singh Rana from Lucknow and Man Singh from Allahabad-Jhansi graduate constituencies. 

For the six teachers constituencies, SP has announced Umashankar Chaudhary from Lucknow, Lal Bihari from Varanasi, sitting MLA from Bareilly-Moradabad constituency Sanjay Kumar Mishra, Dharmendra Kumar from Meerut, Avadhesh Kumar from Gorakhpur-Faizabad division, and Havendra Singh Chaudhary from Agra division.​

Citing SP in the lead with 11 seats, BJP has named its senior leaders as constituencies’ in-charge. The names haven’t yet been declared by BJP. The last day of filing the nomination papers is 12 th November, and the ruling party BJP is expected to declare its candidates before that.

Congress with nominal standing in the state is being extra cautious in selecting its candidates. The declared names include Rajesh Dwivedi from Agra Graduate Constituency, Jitendra Kumar Gaur from Meerut Graduate Constituency, Ajay Kumar Singh from Allahabad-Jhansi Graduate Constituency, Brijesh Kumar Singh from Lucknow Graduate Constituency, Sanjiv Singh from Varanasi Graduate Constituency, Nagendra Dutt Tripathi from Gorakhpur-Ayodhya Teachers Constituency and Mehndi Hassan from Bareilly –Moradabad Teachers Constituency.

Then there is also a Shikshak Dal which is led by Om Prakash Sharma.

The 11 Legislative Council seats had been vacant since May but the elections got postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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