BJP looks to increase seats in Uttar Pradesh Council elections this year

After scoring wins in the Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and the state’s Vidhan Parishad in pandemic-hit 2020, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is looking to further consolidate its position in the UP Upper House, for which elections are due this month.

The election is all the more significant as former IAS officer Arvind Kumar Sharma, who had a high-profile posting in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), quit the service and has been nominated for the state Council polls. Normally, a two-year cooling-off period is mandatory when a bureaucrat leaves an all-India service, though this can be waived.

Though the BJP enjoys an overwhelming majority of nearly 325 members, along with allies, in the 403-member the state Assembly, it is still in a minority in the 100-member Legislative Council, where the Samajwadi Party (SP) leads the pack with 55 seats, followed by the BJP (25), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) (8), and Congress (2).

Elections will be held for 12 Council seats currently held by some heavyweights, like UP Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, UP BJP President Swatantra Dev Singh, SP leader Ahmad Hasan, and Council Chairman Ramesh Yadav. The polling is scheduled to be held on January 28 and the results are expected to be announced the same day.

Even as the BJP is expected to improve its Parishad tally in these polls, the SP, which was in power in UP between 2012 and 2017, will retain the majority tag for some time to come.

While the tenure of 11 members is expiring on January 30, one seat had earlier fallen vacant when the membership of BSP’s Naseemuddin Siddiqui was quashed after he joined the Congress.

Of the 100 Council seats, 10 members are nominated by the governor, 38 are elected by MLAs, 36 are elected by local bodies, and eight each contest from the teachers’ and graduates’ constituencies of the state.

Since a Council contestant would need the backing of 32 MLAs, the BJP is in a position to get 10 of its candidates with some votes to spare, while SP having 49 MLAs can get one member elected.

This way, there would be spare votes with each of the major parties for the twelfth seat, which has made these polls interesting. There are a few Independent MLAs, too, including former UP cabinet minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya.

Dinesh Sharma, the state’s deputy chief minister, told newspersons in Lucknow that the BJP would score wins in all the seats it decides to contest in these elections.

In the December 2020 polls for 11 seats, the BJP won six, while the SP and Independents scooped up three and two seats, respectively.

Similarly, in the polls held for 10 Rajya Sabha seats in the state in November, the BJP managed to win eight seats, and the SP and BSP won one each. The prominent ones elected unopposed from UP to the RS included Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri; Neeraj Shekhar, son of former prime minister Chandra Shekhar; senior SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav; and former UP director general of police (DGP) Brij Lal.

The SP has announced the candidature of two leaders, including party spokesperson and former UP cabinet minister Rajendra Chaudhary and Ahmad Hasan. It can win only one. This has given rise to speculation that the party is trying to forge an alliance with other parties, especially those that have spare votes, to support its second candidate or induce some members of other parties to cross vote.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s gamble to support Independent candidate Prakash Bajaj in the November RS polls failed to pay off, when BSP candidate Ramji Gautam was elected unopposed after BJP gave him a safe passage. However, BSP’s Mayawati was peeved at the SP for allegedly engineering a split in her party, when seven MLAs withdrew support for Gautam.

Later, she had suspended the rebels and announced she would repay the SP in the same coin by ensuring the defeat of SP candidates in the Council polls, even if that meant joining hands with other parties, including the BJP.

When her statement created a furore, Mayawati clarified she had not indicated forging an alliance with the BJP, but only stressed that she was ready to join hands with any outfit, even the BJP, to defeat SP candidates.

However, political analyst Hemant Tiwari said Akhilesh Yadav must have had a strategy up his sleeves when he decided to field two party veterans in the polls, though the SP had the bench strength to ensure the smooth sailing of only one candidate. “The leaders of different political parties would now try to gravitate towards a party that promises them a ticket for the 2022 UP Assembly elections. This could act as an inducement for cross voting,” Tiwari observed.

The Council elections will be followed by panchayat polls later this year. They assume significance in the backdrop of the farmers’ protest against the central farm laws. The panchayat polls were earlier expected to be held last year, however, they were deferred due to the pandemic.