Council polls for a dozen seats in the State has been headed for a `horse-trading’ after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), fielded two candidates taking the tally of contestants to 13. Interestingly, the move was made by the BJP when they were far behind the required number for ensuring comfortable victory for both the candidates. While Congress stay away from the contest, the two other major political parties also fielded one extra candidate for the polls which would now take place on January 23, if no one withdraw the papers or candidature of anyone would be cancelled during scrutiny on Wednesday. The nomination closed on Tuesday.
``We want to utilise our remaining votes so we went ahead and gave two nominees for the council polls and we are also confident of the victory”, claimed BJP State president, laxmikant Bajpai, while talking to media persons soon after both the candidates, lakman Acharya and Daya Shanker Singh filed their nominations for the BJP on last day of nomination on Tuesday. Both the candidates filed two sets of nominations before Returning officer and Principal secretary of the Assembly Pradeep Kumar Dubey. Interestingly, both the candidates not reached together to continue the suspense over second candidate till minutes before the closure of the nomination process.
On Monday, 8 candidates of the ruling Samajwadi Party had filed their nominations while the three candidates of the BSP had filed their nominations last week. Surprisingly Congress, with 28 assembly members has skipped the elections when just 31 votes were required to win a seat. All the three parties have fielded additional one candidate each.
The nomination papers would be scrutinised while January 16 is the last date of withdrawals.
The council candidates of the 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 term of the 12 seats is expiring on January 30. BSP had fielded leader of the Opposition in the council Nasimuddin Siddique, Dharamveer Singh Ashok and Pradeep. Of the retiring 12 members, seven are from the BSP, three from the ruling SP and two from the BJP. Those retiring include leader of the House Ahmed Hasan (SP) and
leader of the Opposition Naseemuddin Siddiqui (BSP). As per the numbers in the state assembly, the ruling Samajwadi Party could win seven seats while the BSP, two and BJP, one. To win a seat, a candidate would be required first preferential support from 31 MlAs. The ruling SP has the highest number of 230 MlAs followed by 80 of BSP, 41 of BJP, 28 of Congress, 8 of RlD, 4 of Peace Party, six independents, 2 of Quami Ekta Dal and one each of TMC, NCP and IMC. RlD has already given their support to the BSP candidates.
The members whose term would expire include Ahmed Hasan, Naseemudin Siddiqui, Ashok Kumar Sidharth, Pratap Singh Bahgel, lokesh Prajapati, Mahesh Arya,Dr Om Prakash Tripathi and Dharamprakash Bharati(all BSP), Dr Sarojni Agarwal and Ramesh Yadav (both SP),Vinod Pandey and Babu Ram MCom(both BJP). Presently the opposition BSP has majority in the Upper House with 59 members while SP has 21 members in the 100-strong Upper House of the UP legislature. BJP has seven, Congress two and RlD has one member in the House. While two seats are vacant, nine
MlCs represent the apolitical teachers’ quota and four belong to the Independent group.