Amidst apparent breach in Samajwadi Party ranks, voting for 10 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh today

Amid indications of a breach in the Samajwadi Party ranks, the stage is set for an exciting contest for 10 Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.

A day before the voting, eight Samajwadi Party MLAs were absent from the meeting and dinner hosted by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday evening. The Bharatiya Janata Party also hosted a dinner for its lawmakers after an exhaustive round of training for the voting.

The SP’s chief whip in UP Assembly Manoj Pandey and seven other MLAs —Abhay Singh, Rakesh Singh, Rakesh Pandey, Vinod Chaturvedi, Maharaji Prajapati, Pooja Pal and Pallavi Patel — did not show up at the meeting-and-dinner hosted by Akhilesh Yadav at the SP state headquarters in Lucknow. None of these MLAs were available for comments as either their phones were switched off or went unanswered.

Akhilesh Yadav has summoned all the SP MLAs to the party office at 10 am on Tuesday to tell them the voting preferences.

On the other hand, already assured of support by nine Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) lawmakers, the BJP got another boost with Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) chief and Kunda MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiya pledging the backing of his party’s two lawmakers to the ruling party.

“Yes, my party will vote for the BJP,” Raghuraj Pratap Singh confirmed at the dinner hosted by chief minister Yogi Adityanath for NDA lawmakers at Lok Bhavan here.

The value of the quota of votes required by each Rajya Sabha candidate is 36.01. This technically means that while 37 votes would be required by each candidate, the value of the vote would be counted at 36.01.

Each vote in Rajya Sabha is 100. Going by this, each vote will have a value of 3601 for the Rajya Sabha polling which would take place from 9am to 4pm at the Tilak Hall of the U.P. Vidhan Bhavan.

With the support of Raghuraj Pratap Singh’s party, the BJP is now assured of the votes of at least 288 MLAs to back its eight candidates. The BJP has 252 lawmakers of its own and is also assured of the backing of three allies — Apna Dal (S)’s 13 lawmakers, six MLAs each of the Nishad party and the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP). (With nine RLD MLAs and two of Raghuraj Pratap Singh’s party, the total comes to 288).

Abbas Ansari of the SBSP is in jail bringing down the strength of the BJP contingent to 287. Since Ansari had won the 2022 U.P. assembly polls as an SP candidate on SBSP symbol, his likely absence is expected to impact the SP more than the BJP. He has not got the court nod to vote so far.

Another SP lawmaker Pallavi Patel had kept the suspense up on her voting plan. She first said she won’t vote in Rajya Sabha polls and then added she would only vote for candidate who matched the party’s focus on “pichda (backward), dalit and alpshanyak (minorities)”.

The lone Bahujan Samaj Party lawmaker Uma Shankar Singh, too, has not opened his cards.

Before the absence of the eight MLAs, it seemed that the Samajwadi Party enjoyed the support of 108 MLAs.

With two MLAs of ally Congress, the strength was expected to go up to 110 then. But with two of its lawmakers – Irfan Solanki and Ramakant Yadav – in jail and unlikely to vote, it faced the tough task of ensuring the win of its third candidate.

“We have enough strength to win. The SP fielded a candidate more than its strength would support. They would know the reality now,” deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, who attended the training organised for NDA lawmakers, said.

“Yes, there would be cross-voting in favour of the BJP and only SP (lawmakers) would ensure the win,” said SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar.

The SP also engaged in some posturing.

A Samajwadi Party lawmaker said, “We also expect some SP members, who contested on the RLD symbol and a few (SP) MLAs, who won on SBSP symbol, as part of a pre-poll arrangement in 2022, to vote for us.”

“The government will try to exert all kinds of pressure, but this won’t work,” SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said.

The eight candidates fielded by the BJP include former Union minister RPN Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, U.P. BJP general secretary Amarpal Maurya, former U.P. minister Sangeeta Balwant Bind, party’s national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former lawmaker Sadhna Singh and former Agra mayor Naveen Jain. Prominent realtor Sanjay Seth is the party’s eighth candidate. He was fielded hours before the end of nomination to ensure there was a contest.

The SP has fielded actor-MP Jaya Bachchan, retired bureaucrat Alok Ranjan and Dalit leader Ramji Lal Suman.