The ruling BJP on Tuesday clean sweeped the biennial elections for 36 seats of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, bagging 33 seats. The ruling party won on 24 seats in the counting today while it had already bagged nine seats unanimously. The remaining three seats — Azamgarh, Varanasi, Pratapgarh — were bagged by Independent candidates.

The BJP, henceforth, emerged as the the single-largest party in the House and now enjoys a majority in both Houses of Uttar Pradesh Legislature. The ruling party broke a 40-year-old record of enjoying complete majority in the House, after Congress in 1982.

The BJP, however, lost the crucial MLC seat of Varanasi, the home constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where jailed mafia don Brijesh Singh’s wife Annapurna Singh won in a one-sided contest. Meanwhile, not even a single Samajwadi Party candidate could make it to the Upper House of UP Vidhan Sabha.

Deoria-Kushinagar — Dr Ratanpal Singh (BJP)

Agra-Firozabad — Vijay Shivhare (BJP)

Basti — Subhash Yaduvansh (BJP)

Ayodhya — Hari Om Pandey (BJP)

Sitapur — Pawan Singh Chauhan (BJP)

Barabanki — Angad Singh (BJP)

Gorakhopur-Maharajganj — CP Chand (BJP)

Ballia — Ravi Shankar Singh alias Pappu (BJP)

Rae Bareli — Dinesh Pratap Singh (BJP)

Lucknow-Unnao — Ramchandra Pradhan (BJP)

Jaunpur — Brijesh Singh Prinsu (BJP)

Mathura-Eta-Mainpuri — Om Prakash Singh (BJP)

Lakhimpur Kheri — Anoop Gupta (BJP)

Mathura-Eta-Mainpuri — Ashish Yadav (BJP)

Hardoi — Ashok Agrawal (BJP)

Badaun — Vageesh Pathak (BJP)

Banda-Hamirpur — Jitendra Singh Sengar (BJP)

Aligarh — Rishipal Singh (BJP)

Bulandshahr — Narendra Bhati (BJP)

Mirzapur-Sonbhadra — Shyam Narayan Singh alias Vineet (BJP)

Fatehpur — Avinash Singh (BJP)

Prayagraj — KP Srivastava (BJP)

Varanasi — Annapurna Singh (Independent) 

Azamgarh — Vikrant Singh (Independent)

Nine MLCs from eight local authorities’ constituencies — Budaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri — were elected unopposed. Two MLCs were elected unopposed from the Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri local authorities’ constituency, while one MLC each was elected unopposed from the remaining constituencies.

In the 100-member Legislative Council, the BJP currently has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party (SP) 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party four. The Congress, the Apna Dal (Sonelal) and the NISHAD party have one member each in the House. The Teachers’ group has two MLCs, while the Independent group (Nirdal Samooh) and Independents have one MLC each. Currently, 38 seats are vacant.

The voters in this biennial election are village pradhans, members and chairmen of block development councils and zila panchayats, and corporators in urban areas. MLAs and MPs also vote.

The Congress and the BSP did not field any candidate in the Legislative Council elections, making it a direct fight between the BJP and the SP, the principal opposition in the state assembly. Of the 36 BJP candidates, five are former SP leaders, who joined the saffron party ahead of the Assembly polls.