BJP wins 6 of 9 seats in UP’s MLC polls

LUCKNOW: Two stunning victories and a stinging setback summed up BJP’s performance in the MLC elections in Uttar Pradesh, in which the saffron party won six out of the nine graduate and teachers’ constituencies where it had fielded candidates, reports Pankaj Shah.


After a marathon 80 hours of vote counting,

Avnish Kumar Singh

of BJP on Sunday emerged victorious in the Lucknow graduate constituency by a margin of 6,403 votes against sitting MLC

Kanti Singh

, whose family had held the seat for 18 years. In Meerut, another graduate constituency dominated for 24 years by Hem Singh Pundhir of Madhyamik Siksha Sangh, BJP candidate Dinesh Goyal won by a huge margin of 28,769 votes.

While BJP’s victories in Meerut and Lucknow ended the decades-old dominance of family satraps, there was heartburn and introspection as the party brass went into a huddle on Sunday over the loss of three-time sitting MLC Kedarnath Singh to Samajwadi Party debutant Ashutosh Sinha in PM Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency of Varanasi.