Polling for 12 UP legislative council seats to be held on January 28
The Election Commission of India on Wednesday announced that polling for 12 legislative council seats in Uttar Pradesh will be held on January 28. In the 100-member UP Legislative Council, the Samajwadi Party has 55 MLCs, BJP has 25 MLCs, BSP has eight MLCs, Congress and 'Nirdaliye Samooh' have two MLCs each and Apna Dal (S) and 'Shikshak Dal' have one MLC each. There are three independent MLCs and three seats are vacant.
General secretary of UP BJP JPS Rathore claimed that the party can easily win 10 out of the 12 seats.
Even if the BJP gets 10 seats, it will still be away from the majority mark in the upper House.
The term of 12 MLCs, including UP's Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, Chairman of UP Legislative Council Ramesh Yadav and state BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, is coming to an end on January 30.
In a statement issued here, the state's Chief Electoral Officer A K Shukla said the notification for the biennial elections will be issued on January 11.
Polling will be held on January 28 and counting of votes will be done on that day itself.
Nominations can be filed till January 18 and scrutiny of nominations will be held on January 19, and withdrawal of names can be done till January 21.
Of the 12 MLCs whose tenure is expiring, six are from the Samajwadi Party.
They are Ramesh Yadav, Ahmed Hasan, Ashu Malik, Sahab Singh Saini, Ramjatan Rajbhar and Virendra Singh.
Those from the BJP are UP's Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, party's UP unit chief Swatantra Dev Singh and Laxman Acharya.
The tenure of the BSP's Pradeep Jatav and Dharamveer Ashok is also coming to an end.
The tenure of Naseemudin Siddiqui, who left the BSP and then joined the Congress, is also coming to an end.
The ECI also issued guidelines to be followed during the entire election process for all persons.
These guidelines are that every person shall wear a face mask during every election-related activity.
At the entry of hall/ room/ premises used for election purposes, thermal scanning of all persons shall be carried out, and sanitiser shall be made available at all locations.
Social distancing shall be maintained as per the extant COVID-19 guidelines of the state government and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh has been directed to depute a senior officer from the state to ensure that the extant instructions regarding COVID-19 containment measures are complied with while making arrangements for conducting the election, the ECI said in the statement.
