Uttar Pradesh MLC polls: BJP bags 6 seats, Samajwadi Party wins 5

Of the 11 Legislative Council seats in Uttar Pradesh that went to polls, the ruling BJP won six and the Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) five. The counting of votes for the last Graduate constituency in Varanasi had stretched till Thursday evening.

The six seats won by the BJP include four Teachers’ constituencies of Bareilly-Moradabad, Lucknow, Meerut and Gorakhpur-Faizabad, and two Graduates’ constituencies of Agra and Meerut. The Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, won the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ constituency, the Lucknow Graduates' seat, the Varanasi Graduates’ seat and two teachers’ constituencies of Varanasi and Agra-Aligarh.

In the last elections in 2020, the BJP held six seats – Agra, Meerut-Saharanpur and Lucknow Graduates' constituencies and Bareilly-Moradabad, Lucknow and Meerut-Saharanpur Teachers' constituencies. The SP held three — Varanasi and Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates' constituencies and Varanasi Teachers' constituency.

The remaining two seats — Agra and Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers' constituencies — were held by Independents. Most of these seats were retained by the respective leaders – BJP’s Dinesh Kumar Goyal and Manvendra Pratap Singh retained their Graduates’ constituencies of Meerut and Agra, while SP’s Man Singh Yadav retained Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ seat.

Among the Teachers’ constituencies, BJP’s Umesh Dwivedi retained Lucknow, while Shrichand Sharma retained Meerut and Hari Singh Dhillon retained Bareilly-Moradabad. SP’s Lal Bihari Yadav retained Varanasi, while Akash Agarwal retained Agra, which he had won as an Independent in 2020.

BJP’s Dhruv Kumar Tripathi also retained Gorakhpur-Faizabad, a seat he had won as an Independent in the previous election. In the Lucknow Graduates' seat, Kanti Singh of SP defeated BJP's sitting MLC Avaneesh Kumar Singh.

Kanti Singh got 56,905 votes, whereas Avaneesh got 39,778 votes. In the Varanasi Graduates’ seat, SP’s Ashutosh Sinha won, securing 55,046 votes, defeating BJP's Kedar Nath Singh. As the counting continued in the seat, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav late Wednesday night accused the Varanasi administration of coming under "contradictory pressure" from Delhi and Lucknow, alleging that the result favouring his party's candidate was ready but the victory certificate was being withheld.

Earlier in the day, BJP workers staged protests, alleging irregularities in counting and demanding a recount. In a series of posts on X, the SP chief alleged that the counting process was being slowed down or halted to prevent the BJP's defeat in Varanasi from becoming “national news,” since Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been the Lok Sabha MP from Varanasi since 2014.

He urged the Election Commission to demonstrate its impartiality and warned that officials allegedly involved in manipulating the results could face legal action. "Voting being stopped or slowed down in Varanasi is part of a conspiracy, and everyone understands it.

But the BJP will not succeed," the former chief minister posted on X at 9.35 pm. The SP chief appealed to his party workers, whom he called "PDA sentinels", to remain vigilant, reiterating: "There is no rest until victory is certified." PDA is the Samajwadi Party's political and social coalition formula.

It stands for Pichhde, Dalit, Alpsankhyak — meaning backward classes, Dalits and minorities. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath congratulated the winner. In a post on X, he expressed hope that the newly elected members would represent the aspirations of teachers and graduates, protect their interests, contribute to the improvement of education and support the state's progress.

"Heartiest congratulations to all the victorious candidates in the biennial elections of the Graduate and Teacher Constituencies of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council – 2026. I am confident that you all will give a strong voice to the aspirations of all teachers and graduates, contribute significantly to the protection of their interests, the enhancement of education, and the progress of the state," he posted.

The MLC polls are being seen as a prestige battle between the ruling BJP and the opposition SP ahead of the next year's Assembly elections. While the Legislative Council elections involve a different electorate and cannot be directly extrapolated to Assembly polls, the SP’s potential gains could boost the morale of the party workers.