A month after its resounding victory in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday swept the biennial polls to the state's legislative council by winning 22 out of 27 constituencies where polling took place last week.
In addition, it was elected unopposed in nine of the 36 constituencies in these biennial elections to the state's Upper House. The results take the BJP past the midpoint in the 100-member House.
But it suffered a setback in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency, where it stood distant third.
The Samajwadi Party, the main opposition in the state, drew a blank.
Two independents and a candidate from the Jansatta Dal-Loktantrik emerged victorious in the elections to the local authority constituencies.
In Varanasi, BJP's Sudama Patel stood third with just 170 votes as Independent candidate Annapurna Singh secured a resounding victory with 4,234 votes.
Samajwadi Party's Umesh Yadav got 345 votes, Varanasi District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said.
Before the polls, the BJP had 34 members in House.
"In the last elections held in 2016, the BJP had not won any of the seats which went to polls this time," UP minister JPS Rathore told PTI.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath congratulated the winners and said the BJP's resounding victory in the council polls has again established that people of the state have faith in the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The ruling BJP won in Moradabad-Bijnor, Rampur-Bareilly, Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Sitapur, Lucknow-Unnao, Rae Bareli, Sultanpur, Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Basti-Siddarthanagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Deoria, Ballia, Jaunpur, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Etawah-Farrukhabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad, Agra-Firozabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur.
Akshay Pratap Singh of Jansatta Dal-Loktantrik defeated BJP's Hari Pratap Singh in Pratapgarh by a margin of 1,107 votes.
The BJP lost Azamgarh-Mau seat to independent candidate Vikrant Singh 'Rishu' by 2,813 votes.
The highest victory margin was of 5,939 votes in the Moradabad-Bijnor constituency, where BJP's Satyapal Saini defeated Ajay Malik of the SP.
The victory margin was the lowest in the Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur seat, where Rama Niranjan of the BJP defeated SP's Shyam Sundar Singh by 579 votes.
BJP's Ravishankar Singh Pappu, grandson of former Prime Minister Chandrasekhar, won from Ballia seat, defeating SP's Arvind Giri by 1,981 votes.
In Lucknow-Unnao constituency, BJP's Ramchandra Pradhan defeated Sunil Singh 'Sajan' by 3,088 votes.
CP Chand of the BJP defeated Rajnish Yadav of the SP in Gorakhpur-Maharajganj seat by a margin of 4,432 votes.
Similarly, in Allahabad, KP Srivastava of the BJP defeated SP's Vasudev Yadav by 1,658 votes.
In Barabanki, BJP's Angad Singh trounced Rajesh Kumar Yadav of the SP by 1,745 votes.
In Sitapur, BJP's Pawan Kumar Singh defeated Arunesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party (SP) by 3,692 votes while in Basti, BJP leader Subhas Yaduvansh defeated SP's Santosh Yadav by 4,294 votes.
BJP's Hari Om Pandey defeated Heeralal Yadav of the SP by 1,680 votes in the Faizabad seat.
There were 95 candidates in the fray and the polling was held at 739 centres, according to the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer.
As many as 1,20,657 people were eligible to vote in the polls held on Saturday.
Nine MLCs from eight local authority constituencies -- Budaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr and Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri -- have been elected unopposed.
Two MLCs were elected unopposed from the Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri constituency, while one MLC each was elected unopposed from the remaining constituencies.
In the 100-member legislative council, the BJP currently has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party 4. After the results, the BJP has 65 MLCs.
The Congress, Apna Dal-Sonelal and the 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.
Currently, 38 seats are vacant.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had vacated his council seat recently while former leader of opposition Ahmad Hassan of the SP died in February this year.
The voters in this biennial election are village pradhans, members and chairmen of block development councils and zila panchayats, and corporators in urban areas.
MLAs and MPs also vote.
The Congress and the BSP did not field any candidate in the legislative council elections, making it a direct fight between the BJP and the SP.
