KASHI BIZMAN’S ENTRY MAKES RS POLLS EXCITING
LUCKNOW : Eight Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates filed their nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, even as the buzz around the party fielding a ninth candidate at the last minute eventually fell flat. However, the dramatic last minute entry of a businessman from Varanasi, with just 10 minutes left for closure of nomination time, has now set up a contest for the November 9 RS polls.
Prakash Bajaj, the businessman, filed his nomination at 2.50 pm and his candidature was supported by 10 lawmakers from Samajwadi Party.
Eight BJP candidates filed their nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls from UP on Tuesday, even as the buzz around the party fielding a ninth candidate at the last minute eventually fell flat.
However, the dramatic last minute entry of a businessman from Varanasi, with just 10 minutes left for closure of nomination time, has now set up a contest for the November 9 RS polls.
Prakash Bajaj, the businessman, filed his nomination at 2.50 pm and his candidature was supported by 10 lawmakers from Samajwadi Party, a move that means there will be contest for the 10th seat on which BSP had fielded Ramji Gautam, the party’s national coordinator and Bihar in-charge. “Unless someone pulls out by Nov 3, or is disqualified, 11 candidates would contest for 10 seats,” said Pradeep Dubey, principal secretary of UP Vidhan Sabha.
Each candidate will require about 37 votes for an outright win. BJP, with 304 MLAs and SP with 48 MLAs in the UP assembly, are in a position to ensure victory of their candidates on their own strength leaving Ramji Gautam to fight it out with Bajaj, who has filed the papers as an independent. “Bajaj would expose the tacit understanding that BJP and BSP had entered into,” said SP’s IP Singh.
The BSP has only 18 MLAs. With BJP not fielding a ninth candidate despite having few surplus votes and support of some ‘opposition’ MLAs, BSP was eyeing an easy win for its candidate until Bajaj’s entry.
“The move suits the BJP. It can always market its decision to not field a candidate against BSP’s dalit candidate while targeting SP as anti-dalit. this also makes it clear that BSP and SP would contest the 2022 elections against each other, a prospect BJP won’t mind,” said Irshad Ilmi, a veteran journalist. Interestingly, both SP and BSP, have few MLAs in its midst, who are there in name but are with BJP -- SP MLA Nitin Agarwal and BSP’s Ramvir Upadhyaya to name a few.