Lucknow : As Voting for the Rajya Sabha election will get underway today, security has been heightened at the gates of the UP Assembly. There are 10 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and 11 candidates in the fray. 8 candidates are from the BJP and 3 from the Samajwadi Party.
As per the numbers in the Legislative Assembly the BJP is guaranteed to win 7 seat while the SP should win 3 seats. But there are reports that several MLAs could cross vote.
The BJP appears confident of pushing through all 8 of its candidates. Uttar Pradesh BJP President Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary said, " We have the support of Nishad Party, Suhel Dev Samaj Party, Apna Dal, Rashtriya Lok Dal and Jansatta Dal. I am confident all 8 NDA candidates will win."
Deputy CM KP Maurya said, "All eight candidates of BJP will win. Akhilesh Yadav has put forward a third candidate even though they don't have the numbers."
On Monday some legislators of the SP went missing from a dinner hosted by SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav. Reports suggest at least 8 MLAs were missing from the dinner and now the fear is these legislators could abstain from the vote or corss vote, either of which will result in BJP winning its eighth seat in the state.
The SP fears that the BJP is putting pressure on its MLAs so that they cross-vote during the Rajya Sabha elections.
"The government is creating pressure on the MLAs for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections. This is how they work. They instil fear, threaten people, provoke agency action on them or take up any old case and pressurise them. All these will not work in this election," the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Monday.
The seven candidates fielded by the BJP are former Union Minister RPN Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, general secretary of the party's Uttar Pradesh unit Amarpal Maurya, former state minister Sangeeta Balwant (Bind), party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh and former Agra mayor Naveen Jain.
But with the BJP fielding Sanjay Seth as its eighth candidate, a keen contest is on the cards in one of the seats.
The SP has fielded actor MP Jaya Bachchan, retired IAS officer Alok Ranjan, and Ramji Lal Suman.
To get elected to the Rajya Sabha from UP, a candidate needs nearly 37 first preference votes. Voting for the 10 Rajya Sabha seats will be held on Tuesday and the results will be announced the same day.
While the NDA and SP-Congress were negotiating with other parties on Monday in an attempt to gather the necessary support for their candidates, the BJP gained momentum when Raja Bhaiyya's Jansatta Dal-Loktantrik promised to extend the support of its two MLAs to the party.
Following his grandfather Chaudhary Charan Singh being honoured with the Bharat Ratna earlier this month, Jayant Chaudhary had already declared RLD's support for the BJP. RLD's nine MLAs met with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and attended a strategy session at Lok Bhawan with NDA partners.