New Delhi: Polling for 36 seats of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council is being held today. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after a resounding victory in the Vidhan Sabha elections will be eyeing to become the single largest party in a 100-member strong Legislative Council as well.
Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath casts his vote in Gorakhpur and said, "After almost 4 decades, a ruling party will attain a majority in the Legislative Council... Anti-land-mafia task force is taking back encroached land from mafias, we won't raze shanties of poor on encroached land until we rehabilitate them," ANI reported.
The seats are spread across 35 local authority constituencies. All of these seats will go to the polls on Saturday and the results for all of them would be out on Tuesday. The current council has 34 MLCs from BJP, 17 from Samajwadi Party, 4 from BSP, and one each from Congress, Apna Dal, and NISHAD Party.
Unlike an Assembly election where citizens cast their vote, in an MLC election, only the elected representatives have the right to vote. A total of 1,20,657 voters would be exercising their right to vote in this election. The people who are eligible to vote would be the MLAs, MPs, village pradhans, members and chairman of block development councils and Zila panchayat, and corporators in urban areas.
MLC candidates from the following constituencies have been elected unopposed: Budaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr, and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri.
BJP Eyes Two-Thirds Majority
The BJP is confident enough to win the majority of the 36 seats as they have a resounding number of elected representatives across various government bodies in UP. "Of these 36 seats, the BJP has won nine unopposed. If the party wins all the 36 seats, you can assume that it will have a two-thirds majority in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council and have no problem in taking forward the development schemes expeditiously," said Yogi Adityanath while addressing his party workers.
Congress and BSP have not fielded a single candidate making it a direct fight between BJP and SP.
'Make Special Arrangements For Free & Fair Elections' - Akhilesh Yadav
The Samajwadi Party chief has raised concerns about the fairness in the upcoming elections and he demanded that special arrangements be made for the same. He accused the BJP of misusing the state machinery for 'rigging the elctions'.
"For the sanctity of democracy and free-fair voting, we hope the Election Commission will discharge its constitutional responsibility. We hope the ruling party will not be allowed to rig tomorrow's voting," Yadav was quoted as saying in the statement by the party.