All 13 candidates declared elected unopposed to UP legislative council

LUCKNOW: All 13 candidates, including two ministers of Yogi cabinet, were declared elected unopposed for as many vacant seats in UP Legislative Council. The formal announcement came through here on Thursday which was the last date of withdrawal of nomination. Earlier, the nomination papers of all 13 were found valid during scrutiny on Tuesday.

As expected, of 13 candidates, 11 of BJP and its ally and one each of SP and BSP were declared officially elected by returning officer Ashok Kumar Chaubey. The election was scheduled for April 26, but since only 13 candidates had filed nomination papers and there was no contention, so all 13 candidates were declared elected by the returning officer.

BJP and its allies will now have total 21 members in the house of 100 but still Samajwadi Party will continue to have a majority in the upper house of state legislature.

While the SP and the BSP had fielded one candidate each, the ruling BJP had put up 10 candidates, including two UP ministers Mahendra Singh and Mohsin Raza. BJP had also nominated husband of Anupriya Patel and Apna Dal (S) president Ashish Singh Patel as its 11th candidate.

The SP has fielded its state unit president Naresh Uttam, while the BSP has nominated BR Ambedkar, who lost in the recent Rajya Sabha polls to BJP’s Anil Agarawal, a Ghaziabad based trader.

The BJP rewarded four turncoats, including Bukkal Nawab, Yashwant Singh, Jaiveer Singh and Sarojini Agarwal, who all had resigned from Council last year to facilitate the entry of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, his two deputies and two other cabinet colleagues to the Council. While Bukkal Nawab, Yashwant Singh and Sarojini Agarwal had quit as SP members, Jaiveer Singh was BSP MLC.

Besides, the four truncoats and two ministers – Dr Mahendra Singh and Mohsin Raza, the other BJP candidates declared elected on Thursday included, Vidhyasagar Sonkar, Vijay Bahadur Pathak, Ashok Kataria and Ashok Dhawan.

Of 13 seats falling vacant on May 5, seven were held by the SP, two each by the BJP and the BSP and one by the RLD.

The 13th seat, which was held by former SP minister Ambika Chaudhary, fell vacant when he joined BSP in the middle of 2017 assembly polls parting ways from SP.

In the 100-member Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, the BJP had only 13 representatives, the SP 61, the BSP nine, the Congress two, the RLD one and others 12. Two seats were vacant.

Thirteen MLCs, including SP national president Akhilesh Yadav and two ministers in the Adityanath government will complete their tenure on May 5.