Large-scale cross-voting was today witnessed in the polling for 13 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council seats with BJP's second candidate failing to win.
The victors included eight candidates of ruling Samajwadi Party, three of BSP and one each of Congress and BJP.
Despite assurance by 8-member RLD of transferring four votes each to Congress and SP, the lone candidate of the 29-member Congress could get only 26 first preference votes.
The 41-member BJP ensured the victory of its first candidate on the basis of first preference votes, while its second candidate got 23 votes, which is 11 more than the party's strength in the Assembly. But it was still not sufficient to see him through as BJP failed to garner 17 additional votes for the victory of Dayashankar Singh.
Each candidate needed 29 first-preference votes to get elected to the Council.
With 14 candidates in the fray for 13 seats, cross voting had become a foregone conclusion, with smaller parties and Independents shooting into prominence overnight.
Peace Party has 4 MLAs, Qaumi Ekta Dal (2), NCP (1), Apna Dal (1), Ittehad-e-Millat Council (1) and Trinamool Cong (1). There are 6 Independents, besides a nominated member with voting right.
In the 403-member Assembly, SP has 229 MLAs, BSP 80, BJP 41 and Congress 29. The rest belong to small parties or are Independents. Besides, there is one nominated member with voting right.
BSP had fielded three candidates and managed seven extra votes for the victory of the trio.
Congress had fielded one candidate and possessed just that many votes for a win.
Those who made it to the Legislative Council are Yashwant Singh, Bukkal Nawab, Ram Sunder Das Nishad, Balram Yadav, Jagjivan Prasad, Shatrughan Prakash, Kamlesh Pathak and Ranvijay Singh (all SP), Atar Singh Rao, Dinesh Chandra and Suresh Kashyap (BSP), Bhupendra Choudhury (BJP) and Deepak Singh (Cong).
