After the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party has geared up for the upcoming elections to 36 seats of the UP Legislative Council from the local body constituency on April 9.
The SP has decided to field Dr Kafeel Khan as its candidate from Deoria- Kushinagar seat. Dr Khan had hit the headlines after the 2017 BRD Medical College Gorakhpur tragedy in which 67 children had died due to the lack of medical oxygen. He was arrested and later dismissed from the medical college.
The other candidates announced by the SP are Rajesh Yadav from Barabanki, Manoj Kumar Yadav from Jaunpur, Umesh Kumar from Varanasi, Amit Yadav from Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur , Vijay Bahadur Yadav from Pratapgarh, Dilip Singh Yadav from Agra-Firozabad, Rajnish Yadav from Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Shyam Sunder Singh from Jhansi-Jalaun, Sunil Singh Yadav from Lucknow-Unnao, Santosh Yadav from Basti-Siddharthnagar, Virendra Shankar Singh from Rae Bareli, Hiralal Yadav from Faizabad, Rakesh Kumar Yadav from Azamgarh-Mau and Mashkur Ahmed from Rampur-Bareilly seat.
The voting will take place on a single day. The Election Commission of India had said in a statement on February 6 that the election schedule had been changed due to the ongoing assembly elections and demands by the political parties to defer the schedule.
The ECI had announced on January 28 that the Legislative Council elections would be held in two phases on March 3 and 7. The counting of votes was to be held on March 12. Under the changed schedule, polling for all 36 seats will be held on April 9 and counting of votes on April 12.
The 100-member UP Legislative Council currently has 35 members from the Bharatiya Janata Party, 17 from the Samajwadi Party and four from the Bahujan Samaj Party. Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD Party have one member each in the UP Legislative Council. At present 37 seats are vacant.
Leader of opposition in the Council Ahmed Hassan recently passed away after prolonged illness. Before the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, many SP’s MLCs had joined the BJP. They included Narendra Singh Bhati, Shatrudra Prakash, Rama Niranjan, Ravi Shankar Singh Pappu, CP Chandra, Ghanshyam Lodhi, Shailendra Pratap Singh and Ramesh Mishra. BSP MLC Suresh Kashyap has also joined BJP.
In the recently concluded UP assembly elections, the BJP has won 255 seats, while its allies Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD Party won 12 and six seats respectively. The Samajwadi Party has won 111 seats, while its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal has won eight seats and another ally Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party has won six seats. The Congress has won two seats, while the Bahujan Samaj Party has won one seat. Apart from this, Raghuraj Pratap Singh’s Jansatta Dal Loktantrik won two seats.