Lucknow: Seven Samajwadi Party (SP) MLAs cross-voted while one abstained in the Rajya Sabha biennial polls in Uttar Pradesh Tuesday to ensure the victory of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, who was falling short by eight votes.
According to the strength of the parties in the assembly, the BJP would have secured seven seats and the SP three, with 37 votes required to secure a win.
The BJP, however, fielded an eighth candidate, Sanjay Seth, at the last moment, forcing a contest.
The BJP has 252 MLAs, and its partners in the NDA have 34, bringing the total to 286. The support of two MLAs from Raja Bhaiya’s Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) took the tally to 288, eight short of the required number of MLAs for the victory of its eighth candidate.
The election turned into a hotly-contested battle between the NDA and the SP, which is part of an alliance with the Congress and Apna Dal (Kamerawadi).
The SP has 108 MLAs but is currently left with 106 MLAs since two of its legislators Nahid Hasan and Ramakant Yadav are in jail. The party, however, received the support of two Congress MLAs and Sirathu MLA and Apna Dal (K) leader Pallavi Patel, who supported the SP after repeated threats of abstention from voting. Pallavi had fought the 2022 polls on an SP symbol and became an MLA from Sirathu.
But, SP’s Jalalpur MLA Rakesh Pandey, Gosainganj MLA Abhay Singh, Gauriganj MLA Rakesh Pratap Singh, Unchahar MLA Manoj Pandey, Kalpi MLA Vinod Chaturvedi, Chail MLA Pooja Pal and Bisauli MLA Ashutosh Maurya defected to the BJP camp. Maharaji Prajapati, the SP MLA from Amethi, abstained from voting.
In all, 395 votes were polled in the Rajya Sabha election. While all the eight BJP candidates got 294 in total, the three SP candidates got 101 votes in total, out of which one vote was termed invalid by Election Commission of India (ECI).
This enabled all the eight candidates of the BJP to sail through, while the SP’s Alok Ranjan, who got 19 valid votes, failed to make it.
Also read: Rajya Sabha polls expose fault lines within BJP-JD(S) alliance in Karnataka ahead of Lok Sabha
SP failed to keep flock together
If it had got 109 votes in favour of its three candidates, the SP would have been short of only two votes to help its third candidate sail through the Rajya Sabha polls. However, the party failed to keep its camp intact as seven of its MLAs voted for the BJP as their first preference.
The seven SP MLAs who cross-voted later posed for pictures with deputy CM Brajesh Pathak in the Vidhan Sabha premises. UP CM Yogi Adityanath also met five of them — Abhay Singh, Rakesh Pandey, Rakesh Singh, Vinod Chaturvedi and Manoj Pandey.
Unchahar MLA Manoj Pandey had also been serving as the chief whip of the SP in the UP assembly but resigned from his post minutes before polling began.
Alok Ranjan, the third SP candidate and former chief secretary of UP, failed to make it to the Rajya Sabha. He got only 19 valid votes, one was termed as invalid, and remained short by 18 votes. In his place, BJP’s Sanjay Seth will enter the upper house of the parliament. He managed to get 29 votes.
Speaking to ThePrint, SP spokesperson Udayveer Singh said that their party candidates got a total of 101 votes, of which one was declared as invalid “because the mark could not be identified properly”.
Party sources said that the one vote which got termed as invalid was that of SP’s Bhojipura MLA Shazil Islam.
The SP had directed its MLAs to vote for Jaya Bachchan and Ramji Lal Suman as their first and second preferences, respectively.
While SP had first decided to make Alok Ranjan as the second preference candidate, a senior party leader told ThePrint that ally Apna Dal (K) MLA Pallavi Patel’s insistence on voting for a candidate from the PDA (pichhda, Dalit, alpsankhyak) grouping forced the change.
Why Seth made it to Rajya Sabha with only 29 votes
In the Rajya Sabha polls, members of state legislative assemblies choose their candidates through the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote (STV). To get elected, a candidate needs to secure a particular number of votes called a “quota”.
When an MLA votes in the Rajya Sabha polls, he fills in the ballot paper with the names of the candidates from the different parties in the fray and marks preference against each candidate. The MLA indicates number 1 against the most-preferred candidate’s name, number 2 against the second-most preferred candidate’s name, and so on.
A candidate is considered elected to the Rajya Sabha if that candidate gets enough first preference votes required to meet the “quota” or more than that.
When two candidates fall short of the number of first preference votes required to meet the quota, the second preference votes are counted.
In such a situation, the candidate getting the required number of second preference votes gets elected.
This is what happened in the Rajya Sabha poll for the eighth seat from UP.
“Sanjay Seth had got a total of 29 votes as first preference. Since he was short of eight votes to get elected, the second preference votes were counted. The BJP had ample number of second preference votes to ensure he reaches the upper house of parliament,” a Vidhan Sabha official privy to the developments told ThePrint.
Also read: Himachal RS polls headed for nail-biter? Congress on guard amid dissent, nominee’s outsider tag
How 8 SP MLAs turned their back on Akhilesh
Cross-voting in the opposition camp seemed likely when at least seven SP MLAs skipped a dinner that party chief Akhilesh Yadav hosted on 26 February. They included Rakesh Pandey, Abhay Singh, Rakesh Pratap Singh, Manoj Pandey, Vinod Chaturvedi and Pooja Pal. Apna Dal (K) leader Pallavi Patel, an invitee, did not attend either.
The biggest jolt, however, came from Manoj Pandey, who resigned from the post of SP’s chief whip in the assembly without giving reasons minutes before polling.
Before the polling, Rakesh Pandey said he was not upset with his party but would vote according to the call of his conscience. As some media persons chanted “Jai Shri Ram” and asked if Ram temple was the phenomenon behind his decision while speaking to him, Pandey said that he has already said in the UP assembly that “Ram is all-pervasive”.
Abhay Singh, who said he could not attend the dinner, posted a picture of Ram Lalla’s idol on his X handle before the polling and wrote “Jai Raghunandan, Jai Siya Ram”.
After the polling, SP chief national secretary Ram Gopal Yadav told the media that just like mushrooms grow in the rainy season and hide later, some mushrooms enter every party similarly.
“They were not with our party in their heart, had joined us erroneously,” Yadav said when asked about the MLAs who did not attend Akhilesh’s dinner and cross voted in the election.
SBSP MLA cross-voted too
Not only the SP camp but the NDA camp also saw cross-voting. An MLA of O.P. Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), too, cross-voted for the SP candidates.
SP national secretary and spokesperson Rajeev Rai wrote on twitter that SBSP’s Jafrabad MLA Jagdish Narayan Rai voted for the SP candidate.
जफराबाद से सुहेलदेव भारतीय समाज पार्टी के
विधायक जगदीश नारायण राय ने समाजवादी पार्टी के उम्मीदवार के पक्ष में वोट डाला है #RajyasabhaElection2024
— Rajeev Rai (@RajeevRai) February 27, 2024
Although Rajbhar refuted the claim while speaking to media persons after the polling, an SP leader told ThePrint that Narayan had voted for Jaya Bachchan.
“We don’t get to know who voted for whom, but yes, he had some issues within the party,” said SP’s Udayveer Singh.
Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said that it needs courage to vote against the government and also hinted the BJP threatened some MLAs about their “criminal background” or promised them “a package”.
“There were discussions in the media and among other sources. You may better understand why someone left, someone may have needed security, someone may have been threatened about pending cases against them or their background, someone has been promised benefits. We are also hearing things about people being promised a package. It’s a different matter whether the package was big or small,” he said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)