LUCKNOW: The BJP clinched a major victory, on Tuesday, by bagging eight out of 10 Rajya Sabha seats, serving a big jolt to main opposition Samajwadi Party which witnessed cross-voting by seven of its MLAs in favour of the ruling party candidates.
The seven SP MLAs who rebelled and voted for the BJP candidates included Abhay Singh, Rakesh Pratap Singh, Rakesh Pandey, Manoj Pandey (SP chief whip), Ashutosh Maurya, Vinod Chaturvedi and Puja Pal. Moreover, one SP MLA – Maharaji Devi abstained and did not turn up to cast her vote thus helping the ruling party candidate.
The ruling BJP also got support of the two MLAs of Raja Bhaiyya-led Jansatta Dal-Loktantrik and of lone BSP MLA Umashankar Singh. On the other, two of the three Samajwadi Party candidates could make it to the upper house of Parliament in a high-pitched battle for the 10 seats which were up for grabs in UP. Of these, the BJP, with 252 MLAs on its books along with 33 votes of allies including 13 of Apna Dal (S), nine of RLD, 6 of NISHAD, 5 of SBSP, had seven seats locked, while the SP, with 108 lawmakers and two of INDIA ally Congress, was looking at a three-seat return.
While the BJP got a total of 294 votes with six of its eight winning candidates including Sudhanshu Trivedi, Sadhna Singh, Sangeeta Balwant, Amrapal Maurya, Chaudhury Tejveer Singh, and Navin Jain, securing 38 votes each. While former Union minister and Congress turncoat RPN Singh got 37 votes, Sanjay Seth, the 8th BJP candidate who necessitated the voting got 29 first preference votes. On the other, SP got 100 votes with Jaya Bachchan securing 41 and Ramjilal Suman 40 votes. The third SP candidate and former UP Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan lost the battle as he got just 19 votes.
Initially, the BJP had fielded seven candidates and the SP three. However, the ruling party fielded Sanjay Seth, a local realtor and businessman, as its 8th candidate making the battle tricky for the SP. However, the rebellion within SP has come at a time when Lok Sabha polls are just a couple of months away.
It is another major jolt to Akhilesh Yadav after Jayant Chaudhury-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) quit the INDI Alliance to join Modi-led NDA. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, who had sensed a big rebellion in his party in the morning when his chief whip Manoj Pandey resigned from his post just a few hours ahead of voting and was spotted along with three other party MLAs with Deputy CM Brajesh Pathak, took to microblogging site X saying that he had fielded the third candidate just to identify the true companion.
"Our third seat (bid) was actually a test to identify true companions. It was to know who is with people from the backward classes, Dalits and minority communities and whose ‘inner voice’ is against them. Now everything is clear. This is our third seat victory," Yadav said braving the dissidence in the party.
Yadav knew that all was not well in his camp when eight of his MLAs had skipped the dinner hosted by him on Monday night. "We knew they would rebel when they skipped the dinner. There was a buzz that different packages have been offered. Those part of the mutiny will be expelled," Akhilesh said while talking to media persons after casting his voting.
