The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has swept the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council teachers biennial polls by winning three of the six seats on Friday. In one seat, BJP-supported independent candidate won the election.
BJP, contesting these polls for the first time on party symbol, dented the vote bank of the Sharma group in the teachers constituencies and ended their overwhelming clout.
The BJP won the seats of Meerut, Lucknow and Bareilly-Moradabad while the BJP supported independent candidate won the Gorakhpur-Faizabad seat.
The Agra seat went to an independent while the Varanasi seat was wrested by the Samajwadi Party candidate. In Varanasi, BJP had supported the independent candidate, who is runner-up.
According to Election Commission, BJP candidate Shreechand Sharma wrested the Meerut teachers seat after four decades from Om Prakash Sharma, who is the leader of the Sharma group. Om Prakash Sharma, 85, was winning had won this seat for the past eight times.
In Lucknow teachers seat, BJP candidate Umesh Dwivedi won by defeating independent Mahendra Nath Rai. In the last election, Dwivedi had won the seat as independent.
BJP supported independent Dhruv Kumar Tripathi retained the Gorakhpur-Faizabad teachers seat.
BJP candidate Hari Singh Dhillon won the Bareilly-Moradabad teachers seat by wresting it from independent.
SP candidate Lal Bihari Yadav won the Varanasi teachers seat by defeating the sitting independent MLC.
Independent candidate Akash Agarwal wrested the Agra teachers seat from SP. The BJP candidate was at third place.
Meanwhile, in the counting at five graduate constituencies, BJP candidates were leading in most of the seats.
The counting started on Thursday morning but due to objections filed by the opposition candidates, the process was delayed.
The counting is still on.
The polling for the 11 Legislative Council seats from teachers and graduate constituencies was held on December 1.