The biennial Rajya Sabha poll for 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh on October 16 is set to be an engrossing electoral contest amid the prospect of cross-voting by lawmakers from both the ruling BJP-led NDA and the Opposition SP camps.
Both sides will look to maximise the “extra votes” factor in an election where each candidate will require 37 first preference votes to win.
The third candidate’s victory will also give the much required boost to the INDIA bloc before the 2027 assembly election,” a Samajwadi Party leader said. The Samajwadi Party will aim to win the support of three RLD MLAs, who were SP members but contested the 2022 assembly election on the RLD ticket as part of the alliance between both parties. Similarly, Abbas Ansari, who was fielded as an SBSP candidate from Mau in 2022 despite his association with the SP under a seat-sharing agreement, is likely to support the Samajwadi Party candidate in the upcoming Rajya Sabha election. Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) leader Pallavi Patel, who won the Sirathu assembly on the SP ticket in 2022, recently met Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav, indicating that ties between the two leaders were on the mend. The October 16 Rajya Sabha election will also mark the end of representation for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the Upper House of Parliament. The tenure of BSP’s lone member Ramji Gautam ends on November 25. Owing to the BJP’s support, Ramji Gautam was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha in November 2020.
“The SP will definitely field three candidates in the upcoming Rajya Sabha election to check the NDA from poaching its MLAs. The SP is likely to work on the unease among some BJP and Nishad Party MLAs who fear they might be denied a ticket in the assembly polls. If the SP is able to make inroads into the NDA ranks, the move may pave the way for its third candidate’s victory. The eight BJP Rajya Sabha members from Uttar Pradesh whose term ends in November include Brij Lal, Geeta Shakya, Hardeep Singh Puri, Seema Dwivedi, Neeraj Shekhar, Arun Singh, BL Verma and Dinesh Sharma, who has already resigned after being appointed lieutenant governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The lone outgoing SP member is the party’s general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav.
