Rajya Sabha polls: BJP wins eight seats in Uttar Pradesh; SP wins two

Lucknow: Cross-voting by Samajwadi Party MLAs helped BJP win all eight Rajya Sabha seats on Tuesday.

Akhilesh Yadav's party could manage to win two seats.

The Samajwadi Party had fielded actor-MP Jaya Bachchan, retired IAS officer Alok Ranjan and Dalit leader Ramji Lal Suman.

While Bachchan got maximum 41 votes, Alok Ranjan could manage 19 votes and lost the election.

The BJP candidates who won the elections are: Former Union minister RPN Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, general secretary of the party's Uttar Pradesh unit Amarpal Maurya, former state minister Sangeeta Balwant (Bind), party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh, former Agra mayor Naveen Jain and industrialist Sanjay Seth.

SP MLAs Rakesh Pratap Singh, Abhay Singh and Rakesh Pandey, who were among eight party MLAs to have skipped Yadav's Monday night meeting, arrived in the same vehicle.

"We will cast our votes as per our inner voices," Rakesh Pratap Singh said. The BJP and the SP are the two largest parties in the 403-member House with 252 MLAs and 108 MLAs respectively. The Congress, an alliance partner of the SP, has two seats.

BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal) has 13 seats, the Nishad Party has six seats, the RLD has nine seats, SBSP six, Jansatta Dal Loktantrik two and the BSP has one seat. Four seats are currently vacant.

At present there are 399 members in the 403-member Assembly with four vacancies. Out of the 399 MLAs, 395 exercised their voting rights on Tuesday: three of them could not vote as they are in jail, while officials could not confirm the other MLA who did not cast the ballot.