Lucknow: Amid speculation of defection and voting,the crucial biennial polling for the 10 seats of the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh commenced at 0900 hours .Union finance minister Arun Jatiely along with eight other BJP candidates are in the fray . Besides SP candidate Jaya Bachhan and BSP candidate B R Ambedkar too are contesting in this elections.There are 11 candidates in the fray for 10 seats of the RS from UP.
With stringent security on place and no one except the Legislators were allowed to enter the polling area, the MLAs were seen reaching their party office in the assembly since 0800 hrs.Politics continued in the polling day morning as BSP president Mayawati held last moment meeting with the Legislators on breakfast.However BSP, which has suffered a setback after one MLA Anil Singh had defected to BJP while another jailed Mukhtar Ansari wasn't allowed to vote by the court. SP MLA Hariom too will not vote as he is in jail.
SP MLA Nitin Agarwal too have defected to BJP while several others are also likely to cross the line during the polling.Political parties, had resorted to dinner diplomacy for the last two day for keeping their flocks together.The ninth candidate of the BJP Anil Agarwal is locked in close contest with the BSP candidate B R Ambedkar backed by the Samajwadi Party and the Congress. Though reports say that the BJP are in comfortable position to wrest the ninth seat due to support by the Independent and smaller party members but still, the result of the tenth seat would be decided in the second preference votes.’
Returning Officer of the Rajya Sabha polls, Ms Poonam Saxena told UNI on Friday that polling has started and all arrangements for free and fair polls were on place.
The polling will be held between 0900 hrs to 1600 hrs at the Tilak Hall in the Vidhan Bhawan premises while the counting of votes would be taken up from 1700 hrs on Friday.Ms Saxena said that Ajay Naik from Bihar has been rushed as a special observer for the elections while Additional CEO UP Govind Raju N S will be the observer for the elections. She said that the polling would be done through open voting where the voter has to show the ballot paper to the party agents before casting their votes.(UNI)