Polling for the state Legislative Council in 36 Upper House seats is underway in Uttar Pradesh. The seats are spread across 35 local authorities’ constituencies. Counting of votes will take place on April 12. Nine MLCs from eight local authorities’ constituencies have been elected unopposed. These seats are Budaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri.
The BJP has set its eye on becoming the single-largest party in the Legislative Council. “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,” Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said after casting his vote Saturday morning.
On the issue of hacking the Twitter account of the CMO, Adityanath said that the agencies are investigating the issue. The Rajya Sabha member and former Union Minister Shiv Pratap Shukla was also accompanying the Chief Minister while voting.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday demanded special arrangements for maintaining fairness and transparency in polls. He said that the manner in which CM Adityanath and other BJP leaders were making claims of winning all the seats raises a question mark on the government’s intention.
“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.
Yadav said, “The BJP government wants to impose an opposition-free and monopolistic rule on Uttar Pradesh by intimidating and luring village heads, BDCs and other voters through officials. This conduct of BJP is an alarm bell for democracy,” he claimed.
The assembly elections were swept by the BJP for a straight second term after it got the highest 41.3 per cent vote share, followed by the Samajwadi Party with 32 per cent votes, according to the Election Commission.
