There is increased excitement in UP Legislative Council elections, 137 candidates are in the fray for 11 seats.
Lucknow. Political activity has intensified regarding the elections to be held on 11 seats of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council. Till Monday, a total of 137 candidates have filed nomination papers for these seats of Block Graduate and Block Teacher constituencies. Tuesday, October 6 is the last date for filing nominations. In such a situation, the number of candidates is likely to increase further on the last day. After the completion of the election process, voting for these seats will be held on October 23, while the results will be declared after counting of votes on October 27.
According to the data released by the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh, the highest number of nominations have taken place in the Varanasi Block Graduate Constituency. Till Monday, 23 candidates filed their papers here. After this, there is Gorakhpur-Faizabad section teacher constituency, where 16 candidates have contested. With the nomination of a large number of candidates on both these seats, the contest seems to be interesting.
So far 14 candidates have filed their nominations for the Bareilly-Moradabad section teacher seat. Whereas in Lucknow Block Graduate and Agra Block Graduate constituencies, 13 candidates each have filed papers. 12 candidates each have filed nominations for Agra section teacher and Varanasi section teacher seats. 10 candidates are in the fray from Lucknow Block Teacher seat, while 7 candidates each have filed nominations so far from Meerut Block Graduate and Meerut Block Teacher constituencies.
There was a lot of enthusiasm regarding nominations on both the Legislative Council seats of Lucknow on Monday. A total of 19 candidates, including those from BJP, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, submitted nomination papers for Lucknow Block Graduate and Lucknow Block Teacher constituencies on Monday. Candidates filed their nominations before the Returning Officer in the Divisional Commissioner’s office.
Seven candidates filed nominations for the Lucknow section teachers’ constituency on Monday, while 12 candidates filed nominations for the graduates’ section. BJP candidate Umesh Dwivedi and Samajwadi Party’s Sushil Kumar filed nomination from the teachers seat. For the Lucknow graduate seat, other candidates including BJP’s Avneesh Kumar Singh, SP’s Kanti Singh and BSP’s Chandra Bhan Maurya have contested the election.
A large number of independent candidates are also trying their luck in the Legislative Council elections. Several independent candidates have filed nominations in Lucknow, while some others have received nomination papers to contest the elections. It is clear from this that the competition is not going to be limited only between major political parties. The presence of various teachers organizations, graduate groups and independent candidates could create a multi-cornered contest on many seats.
In this election, BJP has declared candidates for all 11 seats. The party had also announced candidates for its remaining six seats at the end of September. Among these, some existing Legislative Council members have been given a second chance.
Samajwadi Party has also fielded its candidates on many seats. During this period, some political turmoil also came to light regarding ticket distribution. After not getting ticket from BJP in Gorakhpur-Faizabad region, Sanjayan Tripathi left the party and later joined Samajwadi Party. SP also declared him as its candidate.
Azad Samaj Party has also registered its presence in this election by fielding candidates in Agra Graduate Constituency. The party has made Daksh Yadav its candidate. Party chief Chandrashekhar Azad was also present during the nomination.
The competition has become interesting in Varanasi also. Here, candidates of both Congress and Samajwadi Party are in the fray on some seats. Due to this, different election strategies are visible among the opposition parties at the local level.
These 11 seats of the Legislative Council belong to five graduate and six teacher constituencies. Like normal assembly elections, not all voters vote on these seats. Only the registered eligible voters in the respective graduate and teacher constituencies elect their representatives. So the candidates are focused on increasing connections between teacher organizations, educational institutions, and graduate voters.
After the completion of the nomination process, the nomination papers of the candidates will be scrutinized. After this the process of withdrawal of nominations will be completed and the picture of the final candidates will be clear. At present, the election contest appears to be wide with nomination of 137 candidates. This figure may increase further in case of large number of nominations on the last day on Tuesday.
Before the voting to be held on October 23, all major parties and candidates will intensify campaigning in their respective constituencies. Local issues related to teachers and graduate class, employment, education system, service conditions of teachers and problems related to higher education can become major issues in the election campaign. With the counting of votes on October 27, it will be clear who the voters have chosen as their representative on these 11 seats of the Legislative Council.