Upcoming LS by-polls, council elections hot up political firmament in UP

Lucknow: After the tough challenge of the assembly polls, once again the political parties in UP are going to face the intense electoral struggle. Along with the by-elections for the two parliamentary seats, elections are also going to be held this month for the thirteen seats of the Legislative Council.

While the SP is trying to retain its bastions Rampur and Azamgarh, the BJP is looking for a way to make a dent here. Congress has not yet revealed its plan regarding contesting the by-polls.

Avoiding contesting in Rampur, the BSP chief has made the contest interesting by fielding a candidate in the Azamgarh by-election. Now the contest in Azamgarh, which was Akhilesh’s parliamentary seat, is likely to be triangular, while the election struggle in Rampur seat, which is considered to be Azam Khan’s stronghold, will remain SP vs BJP. At the same time, out of the 13 seats of the Upper House of the UP legislature, for which elections are going to be held on June 20, six seats were with the SP and three seats each with the BJP and BSP and one seat with the Congress.

The contest will remain confined between BJP and the SP. It is significant that in the recently held elections for three dozen seats in the local authorities’ constituencies of the Legislative Council, BJP had won 33 seats; this time also the party is sure to win the maximum number of seats. Actually, to win a seat in the council, the support of 32 members of the assembly will be required. In such a situation, the BJP-led alliance with 273 MLAs will easily win eight seats. After this, BJP will make every effort to get the ninth seat through the remaining 17 votes.

However, the SP alliance can win only 4 seats. But there is a long queue of contenders for limited seats of the SP quota. Sunil Sajan, Sanjay Lather, Rajpal Kashyap and Udayveer, who are considered members of Team Akhilesh, have not been a part of any House yet. The names of party veterans Ram Govind Chaudhary, Ram Asare Vishwakarma & Nadeem Farooqui are also among those who intend to go to the Legislative Council. At the same time, there is pressure on the SP camp to adjust Swami Prasad Maurya, Imran Masood and Omprakash Rajbhar’s son Arvind. Political observers insist that BJP will not face much problem in securing council membership to its leaders because even after winning 9 seats, there will also be a chance to adjust its members on 6 council seats of the Governor’s nominated quota.