Muristek
Lucknow, April 9
Voting for 27 seats coming under local authorities' constituencies in the biennial polls for the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council commenced on Saturday.
According to the office of the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer, there are 95 candidates in the fray.
Polling will take place at 739 centres, and as many as 1,20,657 voters are expected to exercise their franchise.
Voting will be held for the following local authorities' constituency - Moradabad-Bijnor, Rampur-Bareilly, Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Sitapur, Lucknow-Unnao, Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Basti-Siddharthnagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Deoria, Azamgarh-Mau, Ballia, Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur, Etawah-Farrukhabad, Agra-Firozabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur.
These seats are spread over 58 districts in the state.
Voting began at 8 am and will continue till 4 pm. Counting will take place on April 12.
Nine MLCs from eight local authorities' constituencies have been elected unopposed. The constituencies are Budaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri.
Two MLCs were elected unopposed from the Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri local authorities' constituency, while from the rest of the constituencies, one MLC each was elected unopposed.
Following a resounding victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the BJP has set its eye on becoming the single-largest party in the state Legislative Council as well by winning a majority of the 36 Upper House seats.
It is an opportunity for the saffron party to enjoy a majority in both the Houses of the Uttar Pradesh Legislature.
In the 100-member Legislative Council, the BJP currently has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party four. The Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and 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.
As many as 38 seats are vacant at present.