Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his two deputies will file nomination papers on Monday for the bypolls to the vacant Legislative Council seats. “They will file their nominations tomorrow,” newly appointed UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey told PTI in Lucknow on Monday. Tuesday is the last date for filing nominations.
According to the Election Commission, scrutiny will be done on September 6, while the last date for the withdrawal of candidature is September 8. Polling will be held on September 15 and counting of votes will be done the same day.
Adityanath, who took over as the chief minister on March 19, has to become a legislator within six months of assuming office and that deadline expires on September 19. Besides Adityanath, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, and ministers Swatantra Dev Singh and Mohsin Raza are not members of either of the two Houses of state legislature.
All of them have to get elected to either the Assembly or the Legislative Council before September 19 in order to continue as ministers. Adityanath and Maurya are presently members of the Lok Sabha.
Adityanath will become the third successive chief minister after Akhilesh Yadav (SP) and Mayawati (BSP), to opt for the Upper House.
The four seats for which bypolls will be held on September 15 were vacated by MLCs Bukkal Nawab, Yashwant, Sarojini Agarwal and Ashok Bajpai – all from the Samajwadi Party. Another seat fell vacant when Thakur Jaiveer Singh, a former BSP MLC resigned from the party and joined BJP.
