- BJP secured six UP Council seats; SP won five.
- SP took Varanasi seats; BJP narrowly held Gorakhpur.
- Congress retained Nagpur constituency, a setback for BJP.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained its overall lead in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council elections, winning six of the 11 graduates’ and teachers’ constituencies that went to the polls. The Samajwadi Party (SP) won five seats, improving its tally ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
The results saw the SP increase its seat count from three in the 2020 elections to five, while the BJP maintained its tally of six. The outcome also highlighted the close contests between the two parties in constituencies where registered graduates and teachers form the electorate.
The BJP faced setbacks in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, where the SP won both the teachers’ and graduates’ seats. In Gorakhpur, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s stronghold, BJP candidate Dhruv Tripathi narrowly retained the teachers’ seat, defeating Independent candidate Rajeev Yadav by just 307 votes.
BJP Retains Key Seats, SP Makes Gains
The BJP retained the Meerut Graduates’ seat, where Dinesh Kumar Goyal won, and the Agra Graduates’ seat, where Manvendra Pratap Singh defeated his rival. In the teachers’ constituencies, the party won Lucknow, Meerut, Bareilly-Moradabad and Gorakhpur-Faizabad.
The SP won the Agra-Aligarh Teachers’ constituency, where Akash Agrawal defeated BJP candidate Hari Kishore Tiwari. It also retained the Varanasi Teachers’ seat, where Lal Bihari Yadav emerged victorious.
The party added to its tally with victories in the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ constituency, where Maan Singh Yadav won, and the Lucknow Graduates’ seat, where Kanti Singh Patel defeated BJP incumbent Awanish Kumar Singh. In the Varanasi Graduates’ constituency, SP candidate Ashutosh Sinha defeated BJP candidate Kedar Nath Singh.
BJP’s Narrow Win In Gorakhpur
The contest in the Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers’ constituency proved particularly close. BJP candidate Dhruv Tripathi defeated Independent candidate Rajeev Yadav by 307 votes, securing a narrow victory in the chief minister’s home region.
The SP had fielded Sanjayan, a BJP rebel, but the reported vote figures indicated that SP voters backed Independent candidate Rajeev Yadav. The result highlighted the tight contest in the constituency, even as the BJP retained the seat.
The BJP retained five of the six seats it had won in 2020 and gained one more, while the SP retained its three seats and added two. Independent MLCs Dhruv Tripathi and Akash Agrawal, who had won the Gorakhpur-Faizabad and Agra teachers’ seats in 2020, respectively, had since moved to the BJP and the SP.
Congress Wins Nagpur MLC Seat In Maharashtra
In a separate setback for the BJP, the Congress retained the Nagpur Graduates’ constituency in Maharashtra, with incumbent MLC Abhijit Vanjari winning for a second consecutive term. The constituency is in the home region of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.
Vanjari secured 67,231 votes, defeating BJP candidate Sudhakar Kohale, who received 63,960 votes. The Congress leader won by a margin of 3,271 votes, while Independent candidate Nitesh Karale also contested the election.
The Nagpur result added to the BJP’s electoral setbacks in the two states, even as the party maintained its overall lead in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council elections.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: abplive.com
