UP MLC Results: BJP Wins 6 Of 10 Declared Seats, Samajwadi Party Takes 4

The Bharatiya Janata Party has won six of the ten Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council seats for graduates and teachers for which results were declared on Wednesday, while the Samajwadi Party has won four. Voting was held for 11 such seats. In the Varanasi Graduates’ constituency, the Samajwadi Party was leading and the result was awaited.

The results come ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The graduates’ and teachers’ constituencies are part of the state’s Legislative Council, the upper house of the state legislature. These seats are elected by graduates and teachers registered as voters in the respective constituencies, not by the general electorate.

In the graduates’ constituencies, the BJP’s Dinesh Kumar Goyal won Meerut and Manvendra Pratap Singh, known as “Guru Ji”, won Agra. In the teachers’ constituencies, the BJP’s Umesh Dwivedi won Lucknow, Shrichand Sharma won Meerut, Hari Singh Dhillon won Bareilly-Moradabad and Dhruv Kumar Tripathi won Gorakhpur-Faizabad. Of the BJP’s six wins, two were in graduates’ constituencies and four in teachers’ constituencies.

The Samajwadi Party won Lucknow Graduates’, where Kanti Singh Patel defeated sitting BJP MLC Awanish Kumar Singh. The party also won Agra Teachers’, where Akash Agrawal was elected on the SP ticket, and Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’, where Man Singh Yadav won. In Varanasi Teachers’, the SP’s Lal Bihari Yadav won with 11,612 votes. Of the SP’s four wins, two were in graduates’ constituencies and two in teachers’ constituencies.

In the previous elections to these 11 seats, held in 2020, the BJP won six, the Samajwadi Party three and independents two. In the current round, the SP has so far won four of the ten declared seats, while the BJP has won six. The BJP remains ahead in the tally of declared seats, but the SP has improved its position compared with 2020.

Samajwadi Party president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said in a post on X that the MLC elections had “packed up the BJP’s bags and baggage”. He alleged that the BJP had used malpractice and administrative manipulation in Gorakhpur and Varanasi. Gorakhpur is associated with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and Varanasi is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency.

The BJP is the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh, and the Samajwadi Party is the principal opposition party in the Assembly. The Legislative Council is the upper house of the state legislature. Its members are elected by graduates, teachers, local authorities and MLAs, and some are nominated. The graduates’ and teachers’ seats represent specific electorates rather than the general electorate, so the results are not a direct measure of overall voter sentiment. They are, however, watched for political signals ahead of Assembly elections.

Counting for the remaining seat in Varanasi Graduates’ was still under way, and the final tally for all 11 seats will be known after that result is declared.