LUCKNOW: The battle for 10 Rajya Sabha seats in UP took an interesting twist on Tuesday when a Varanasi-based lawyer Prakash Bajaj filed nomination as an Independent candidate backed by the Samajwadi Party.
The biennial elections to 10 Rajya Sabha seats of UP and one of Uttarakhand are scheduled on November 9, a day ahead of the results of Bihar Assembly polls.
On Monday, the ruling BJP had sprung a surprise by announcing only eight candidates for the November 9 RS polls. The decision was contrary to the popular perception that the party would make a bid for a ninth seat as it had done in 2018.
As the SP had its lone candidate (Prof Ram Gopal Yadav), BSP chief Mayawati was eyeing the 10th seat for her party candidate Ramji Gautam, who has already filed the nomination. Now, as the SP has put stakes on the 10th seat as well with the nomination of Prakash Bajaj, voting has become inevitable.
To get elected to the Rajya Sabha, each candidate will have to secure at least 37 votes. This way, the SP, with a strength of 48 MLAs in UP assembly, has 11 additional votes to spare. However, one of its MLAs Nitin Agarwal will pitch in favour of the BJP as his father Naresh Agarwal had joined the saffron brigade in 2018 after being denied a Rajya Sabha ticket.
As per the configuration, the strength of the Assembly at present is 395 and eight seats are lying vacant. In a House of 395, BJP has 304 MLAs. The party needs 296 MLAs for its eight candidates to sail through with eight spare votes.
With nine MLAs of its ally Apna Dal (Sone Lal) and eight spare MLAs of its own, the BJP would have to muster 20 additional votes if it had fielded a candidate for the 10th seat. Moreover, two Congress MLAs -- Aditi Singh and Rakesh Singh and two BSP MLAs -- Anil Singh and Ram Veer Upadhayay -- have already been in touch with the BJP for the past many days. In such a scenario, BJP would have needed only 16 votes if it had filed its 9th candidate.
However, the BJP leadership claimed that fielding or supporting an 11th candidate was never on the cards. “Our eight candidates had been sailing through easily so we fielded only eight,” said a senior party leader. He denied the rumours of fielding wife of former Union minister late Akhilesh Das. Even though
speculation was rife that Das’s wife Alka had purchased papers to file her nomination.
Political analysts believe that after BJP decided not to field an additional candidate, it became clear that there would be no polling and all 10 candidates, including Ramji Gautam of BSP, would sail through with its support as BPS has only 18 MLAs. It would have also allowed the BJP and BSP to come closer,
analysts added.
But now with SP changing the equations, polling is a certainly on November 9.