Elections for the biennial polls to 12 seats of the legislative Council, scheduled on January 23, became eminent after none of the 13 candidates withdrew their nominations on the last day of withdrawal on Friday. Horse-trading and other political activities have tarted to lure the legislators for the elections where all the three parties— SP, BSP and BJP have fielded additional one candidate each from their actual strength. Returning officer and Principal Secretary(Assembly) Pradeep Kumar Dubey disclosed here on Friday afternoon that none of the 13 candidates contesting for 12 seats have withdrawn their candidature before the expiry of the withdrawals at 3pm. He said now polling would be held on January 23 from 9am to 4pm and the counting of votes to be taken up from 5pm on the same day and results is to be declared thereafter. Senior UP IAS officer Amit Ghosh has been made the
Central observor for the elections.
The BJP gave two candidates in the council polls on the last day of filing of the nominations on January 13, thus forcing the elections in the last moment. lakman Acharya and Daya Shanker Singh filed their nominations for the BJP on the last day. Eight candidates of the ruling Samajwadi Party and three candidates of BSP had filed their nominations. Surprisingly, the Congress with 28 Assembly members, has skipped the elections, when just 31 votes were required to win a seat. The council candidates of Samajwadi Party are leader of the legislative Council and state Health Minister Ahmed Hasan, Ramesh Yadav of Etah, Sarojni Agarwal of Meerut (all three re-nominated), Ramjatan Rajbhar of Azamgarh, Saheb Singh Saini of Saharanpur, Ashok Bajpai of Hardoi, Virendra Singh Gujjar of Shamli and Ashu Mallick. The BSP had fielded leader of the Opposition in the Council, asimuddin Siddique, Dharamveer Singh Ashok and Pradeep. The term of 12 members is expiring on January 30.