New Delhi: Despite winning more votes than his BJP-back rival, Mayawati’s BSP candidate lost the election for a Rajya Sabha seat due to lower second preference votes.
Though elections for 59 seats in the Rajya Sabha was elected on Friday, the result of the BSP candidate — backed by the Samajwadi Party and the Congress — hogged limelight owing to the electoral impact that the SP-BSP alliance could have in Uttar Pradesh in 2019 polls.
On Friday, a tough contest was seen between the BJP-backed independent candidate Anil Agarwal who got 22 first preference votes and the BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar who got 33 first preference votes.
This clearly proves that some of the BJP’s allies cross voted and it was because of this that Anil Agarwal got less than the allotted 28 votes.
However, the BJP candidate won after counting of second preference votes while the BSP candidate did not get second preference votes form SP. The ruling BJP won nine seats in UP and the SP one. The BJP won one seat in Karnataka and one in Chhatt-isgarh. The result from Jharkhand was awaited.
This election is expected to allow the BJP to consolidate its position as the largest party in the Rajya Sabha. The prominent people who won include finance minister Arun Jaitley and BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao, SP's Jaya Bachchan (all from UP), Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi from West Bengal, and the BJP’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Karnataka.
