A day after Samajwadi Party has notched a resounding victory in bye-elections, a battle line has been drawn in the Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh where 11 candidates are in the fray for 10 seats where elections would be held on March 23.
After withdrawal of two BJP candidates— Vidya Sagar Sonkar and Salil Bisnoi on the last day of withdrawal on Thursday, now 9 candidates of the BJP and one each of the SP and BSP are in the fray. Two general secretaries of the BJP state unit Vidya Sagar Sonkar of Jaunpur and former MLA from Kanpur Sahil Bisnoi had filed their nominations at the fag end of the last day of the nomination.
The RS elections will now open for horse trading and defection. Election would be held through open ballots and members who violate the party whip could be disqualified.
However, the Samajwadi Party, who is on cloud nineover Wednesday’s bypoll results winning both the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats, is the worried as now pressure would be on Akhilesh to ensure victory for BSP candidate.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav, who met the party MLAs, asked the legislators to unite to ensure victory for BSP candidat. “ They have supported us and we won by the LS by-polls with their help. Now it is our duty to support the BSP candidate and make its candidate successful,” he told them in a meeting which lasted for about 30 minutes.
Around 40 MLAs of the total 47 attended this meeting with Nitin Agarwal, son of Naresh Agarwal, Shivpal Singh Yadav, Sanjay Garg and couple of others gave a miss to this meeting.
Later when Akhilesh went to meet Mayawati at her residence last evening to thank her for the support, the BSP president reminded her SP counterpart about the RS polls. Both of them discussed about the strategy to be adopted during the crucial RS polls when BJP has fielded its ninth candidate.
BJP had fielded eight candidates officially including Union Finance minister Arun Jatiely but on the last day a businessman Anil Agarwal of Ghaziabad too filed as independent supported by BJP thus forcing elections in the RS elections. The other BJP candidates in the fray are Ashok Vajpayee, Sakaldeep Rajbhar, Kanta Kardam,Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, Dr Anil Jain, GVL Narsimha Rao, Harnath Singh Yadav
Bollywood actor Jaya Bachhan (SP) and BSP candidate B R Ambedkar are the two other candidates in the fray.
As per the calculation, BJP can win eight seats comfortably with 324 votes which included its alliance partners too of the total 10 at stake, while SP can win one and a joint opposition can win the tenth seat.
But now the fate of the BSP candidate hangs in balance after BJP fielded one more candidate.
A candidate will require 37 votes for winning in the first round of counting in the polls.
BJP and its alliance partners will have a spare 28 votes after win of eight candidates and they just need another nine votes while the BSP should have support from the of SP, who have 10 votes and 7 of the Congress, besides BSP too have 19 votes.
But In SP too, Nitin Agarwal and a couple of others could go against the whip.
The role of the four Independents, besides the second preferential votes would be key for the win of the10th candidate in the poll.
n the 2016 Rajya Sabha polls too, BJP supported an Independent Priti Mahapatra but she lost. Congress leader Kapil Sibal won the elections in the second preferential votes.