Yogi Adityanath tells panchayat members to ensure BJP sweeps UP Legislative Council polls

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday held a virtual interaction with block development council and zila panchayat members, tasking them with the responsibility of ensuring a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweep in the 36 MLC local authorities’ seats of the UP Legislative Council, for which polling is scheduled on April 9.

“If we win all these 36 seats, we would then have close to 75 members in the 100-member upper house,” Yogi Adityanath said.

“The BJP would then have majority in both the UP assembly as well as the council,” Yogi Adityanath said.

The opposition Samajwadi Party had held 31 of these 36 seats that are now vacant.

It thus had more members than the BJP. The ruling party now seeks to correct the situation by winning majority of these vacant seats. Gram pradhans, panchayat members play an important role in these polls.

The voters in this election are village pradhans, members and chairpersons of block development councils and zila panchayats, besides corporators of civic bodies.

In 2021, the BJP had won 67 of the 75 zila panchayat chairpersons’ polls and 648 of the 825 block pramukh or kshetra panchayat chairpersons’ posts.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath said the BJP government has been working for all the sections of the society. “It is because we never discriminated that the people helped us win a back-to-back term, a first in 37 years (in UP). In the last five years, we initiated various reforms at the kshetra panchayat, gram panchayat and zila panchayat level. Now, we need to fast track these works,” the chief minister said.

Dinesh Pratap Singh, who was earlier the Congress MLC from Rae Bareli local authorities seat, is now the BJP candidate for the same seat. He has also been appointed a minister of state in the Yogi 2.0 government, showcasing the seriousness with which the party was approaching these polls.

In 2019, he had contested against the Congress chief Sonia Gandhi from Rae Bareli on the BJP ticket and lost.

Deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya was connected virtually during the CM’s interaction. The other deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak and Jal Shakti minister and UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev were present.

The MLC polls were initially to be held on March 3 and March 7. They had to be rescheduled on the request of the political parties that had argued in favour of holding them after the assembly elections. Now, polling will be held simultaneously on April 9 for all the 36 seats and votes would be counted on April 12.