BJP has the numbers to send eight candidates to Legislative Council

| | Lucknow | in Lucknow

With the nascent patch up with its ally Suheldeo Bhartiya Samaj Party, (SBSP) the BJP is now breathing easy in the run up to the Rajya Sabha polls scheduled on March 23. 

The BJP has the numbers to send eight candidates to Legislative Council while its ally SBSP with four MLAs in the 403-member Assembly, holds thee key to the success of its ninth nominee.

The BJP and its allies have 324 seats in the Assembly after the death of its Noorpur MLA in a road accident recently. To secure a win in this Rajya Sabha election, a candidate needs 37 first preference votes. 

Thus the BJP on its strength can easily win eight of the 10 seats and will be left with 28 surplus votes. With the SBSP now deciding to go with the BJP, its confident of the victory of its ninth candidate. The ruling party is also banking on the support of the four Independent MLAs.

The SBSP had skipped the first-year anniversary celebrations of the Yogi government on March 19 and announced that its MLAs would support BJP candidates after SBSP president and minister Om Prakash Rajbhar met BJP president Amit Shah in New Delhi. 

Rajbhar had sent shock-waves in the ruling dispensation by making his displeasure public with the senior alliance partner and also threatened that its four MLAs would boycott Rajya Sabha elections in case the ‘big brother’ did not redress their grievances.

With 19 MLAs, the BSP is short of 18 first preference votes. With Naresh Agarwal’s son Nitin, who is still an SP MLA, likely to cross-vote for the BJP, the task will become onerous for BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar. Riding on the new bonhomie with the SP, Mayawati is banking on the 10 surplus votes of Akhilesh’ party, besides seven votes of the Congress and one of Rashtriya Lok Dal to reach the magic figure of 37 votes.

UP sends 31 MPs to the 245-member Rajya Sabha, and the BJP, which won a massive victory in the 2017 Assembly elections, is yet to get a lion’s share of these. 

BJP candidates in the fray from UP are Union Finance minister Arun Jaitley, Ashok Bajpai, Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, Sakal Deep Rajbhar, Kanta Kardam, Anil Jain, Harnath Singh Yadav, GVL Narasimha Rao and Anil Kumar Agarwal.