The ruling Samajwadi Party has sweeped the UP legislative Council polls by winning 31 out of the total 36 seats with 8 being elected unopposed. The polling for 28 seats, were held on March 3 where around 97.22 per cent of voters exercised their franchise among around one lakh voters.
The counting of votes started this morning at 8 am and as per the Election Commission the ruling Samajwadi Party candidates won in 31 seats including 8 unopposed. BSP candidates retained the Jaunpur and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur seats while the Congress retained the Rae Bareli seats, which is represented by party president Sonia Gandhi in the Parliament. The BJP surprisingly, drew blank in the elections even as their candidates were runners up in most of the places.
Interestingly, mafia don Brajesh Singh won the prestigious Varanasi seat as an Independent candidate from jail by defeating the SP candidate by a huge margin. BJP had not fielded any candidate from Varanasi, even as the seat is represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the lok Sabha.
In Ghazipur seat too an Independent Vishal Singh was declared elected after as he defeated SP’s Sanad Kumar Singh by slender margin of just 65 votes. In Gorakhpur-Maharajganj seat, CP Chand, the Samajwadi party rebel candidate who was expelled from the party has won the seat defeating the SP’s official candidate Jaiprakash Yadav.
The SP has won the seats of lucknow- Unnao, Sitapur, Pratapgarh, Banda-Hamirpur, Agra-Firozabad Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri Etah (two seats) and Meerut-Ghaziabad. In the polling held on March 3, the SP candidates have won the seats of Moradabad-Bijnor , Rampur-Bareilly, Budaun,Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Hardoi , Kheri , Sultanpur , Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Basti-Siddharth Nagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj ,Deoria ,Azamgarh-Mau , Ballia, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur,Etawah-Farrukhabad, Aligarh and Bulandshahar .