Shah beats Maya in key RS battle...

Bhimrao Ambedkar, who got 33 first preference votes. The BSP candidate was backed by the SP and the Congress.

However, the BJP candidate won after counting of second preference votes as the BSP candidate did not get second preference votes from the SP. The BSP and SP faced cross- voting by two of their legislators.

An MLA of ally Nishad Party also went with the BJP, while two jailed legislators — BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari and SP MLA Hariom Yadav — were not allowed by the courts to cast their votes. Taking the total loss of the SP- BSP alliance to five votes.

BSP MLA Anil Singh voted for the BJP and said, “I have voted for the BJP. I do not know about the rest”. Mr Singh, late on Thursday night, was seen heading for the chief minister’s residence for a dinner meeting which made it clear that he would not vote for his party’s official candidate.

SP MLA Nitin Agarwal, son of former SP leader Naresh Agarwal, also voted for the BJP.

Independent MLA Aman Mani Tripathi said that he had “followed the guidelines of Maharaj ji” ( Yogi Adityanath) and voted for the BJP.

Two MLAs of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, a BJP ally, are reported to have crossvoted in favour of the BSP. The other ally of the BJP — Apna Dal which has nine MLAs — claimed to have voted in favour of the BJP.

Independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya left everyone guessing on Friday.

He tweeted that he had not changed and neither had his ideology. “I am with Akhileshji but this does not mean that I am with BSP. I will vote for SP candidate ( Jaya Bachchan).”

Shortly after Raja Bhaiyya’s tweet, Akhilesh Yadav tweeted, “Thank you for supporting Samajwadi Party” with his photograph with Raja Bhaiyya who, ironically, is seen wearing a saffron kurta. Raja Bhaiyya was one of the last legislators to cast his vote and immediately after casting his vote, he proceeded to meet chief minister Mr Adityanath that sent rumor mills spinning.

Raja Bhaiyya is known for his anti- BSP stand after he and his father Uday Pratap Singh were booked under POTA in 2003 by the then chief minister Mayawati who accused them of plotting to topple her government. He is said to be upset over the SP- BSP alliance.

BSP MLAs arrived together to cast their votes, as did the seven Congress MLAs.

From the Samajwadi Party, Shivpal Yadav was the first to cast his vote.

A total of 400 legislators cast their votes on Friday.

Voting ended around 3 pm, an hour earlier than scheduled. But there were dramatic scenes before the counting as Opposition parties approached the EC over cross- voting.

The EC asked for security camera footage after the SP and the BSP alleged that the lawmakers had not displayed their ballots to party agents, as is the rule after voting.

“We complained to the EC that our MLA Anil Singh did not show his vote to the election agent of the party before casting it,” said Uma Shankar Singh, deputy leader of the BSP in the state Assembly.

The SP lodged a similar complaint against MLA Nitin Agarwal, who had switched sides after his father quit the party and joined the BJP recently.

There were 11 candidates for 10 Rajya Sabha seats and 37 first preference votes were needed for each seat. The BJP had 324 MLAs to ensure a win on eight seats comfortably. The Samajwadi Party had 47 lawmakers, enough to win one seat while the BSP had 19 lawmakers of which one is in jail and one has cross voted. So, with an effective strength of 17, the BSP needed 20 extra votes which it failed to manage. In West Bengal, the ruling Trinamul Congress won four seats. All four TMC candidates — sitting Rajya Sabha member Nadimul Haque and first- time nominees Subhasish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas and Santanu Sen — made it to the Upper House comfortably.

Congress’ Abhishek Manu Singhvi won the fifth Rajya Sabha seat from the state. He called his victory “humbling and uplifting” and the result of “cooperation between different groups and MLAs”.

In Assembly poll- bound Karnataka, three seats were won by the Congress and one by the BJP. Congress’ Dr L. Hanumanthaiah, Dr Syed Naseer Hussain and G. C. Chandrasekhar and ’ s Rajeev Chandrashekar bagged the seats in the state.

BJP’s Saroj Pandey won the lone seat in Chhattisgarh by beating Congress’s Lekhram Sahu. In Jharkhand, the Congress and the BJP won one seat each.

In Telangana, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi( TRS) won all the three seats. TRS candidates B. Prakash, B. Lingaiah Yadav and J. Santosh Kumar were declared elected.

In Kerala, M. P. Veerendra Kumar, the state president of the Janata Dal ( U) Sharad Yadav faction, retained his seat in Kerala bypoll. He had vacated the seat in December 2017 to protest against JD( U) leader and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar joining hands with BJP- led NDA.