Will the elephant ride a cycle to the Rajya Sabha?

All eyes are on Uttar Pradesh where a cliffhanger of a contest is under way for ten Rajya Sabha seats on Friday. As many as 48 other seats in 15 other States will also go to the polls simultaneously.

The shape of critical political alliances in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is largely dependent on the election of BSP’s candidate Bhim Rao Ambedkar in Uttar Pradesh.

If, along with the support of ten superfluous votes of the Samajwadi Party (SP), seven Congress MLAs, a lone Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) MLA and a Nishad Party MLA, Ambedkar manages to get elected to the Rajya Sabha, it will seal a formidable alliance that recently trounced the BJP in its citadel in Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha by-polls.

The BSP had supported SP’s candidates, delivering a shocker of a result in the two constituencies previously held by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya. It is now the turn of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav to return the favour and ensure the victory of BSP supremo Mayawati’s candidate in the elections on Friday.

With 311 seats in the 404-member Assembly, the BJP is comfortably poised to win eight seats in UP where Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is among the party’s official candidates. To win, a candidate needs 37 votes. The SP has 47 seats and can therfore easily get its official candidate – Jaya Bachchan – elected. The BSP, which has 19 seats in the Assembly, will need another 18 votes to get Ambedkar elected.

The SP, which should have had ten superfluous votes to cast in the BSP’s lot, now has one less: Nitin Agrawal, the son of Naresh Agrawal, who switched over to the BJP, has pledged his support to the ruling party. The BSP’s tally of 19 is also on shaky ground with Mukhtar Ansari, the muscleman MLA from eastern UP who joined Mayawati’s camp during the 2017 Assembly elections, being in jail. Ansari has managed to get a last-minute court order allowing him to come out to vote. Similarly, Hari Om Yadav, an SP MLA, is also lodged in jail. He is hoping to get the court to sanction to add his vote to the BSP’s tally.

With the threat cross-voting looming large, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has even managed to get his embittered uncle Shivpal Yadav to join his efforts to get Mayawati’s candidate elected. As a show of strength, the nephew and his uncle hosted a dinner party on Wednesday evening when Pratapgarh strongman Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya, who is an independent MLA, was photographed hugging Akhilesh Yadav.

Even if these hectic parleys bear fruit, the BSP’s tally may not touche 37. “And that will show us which way the elephant will turn. The SP and BSP are formidable together, but Behenji (Mayawati) will need proof of delivery from Akhilesh,” said an SP leader. Another interesting contest is being staged in Karnataka, where the Congress can comfortably win two seats on its own. A candidate needs 45 votes to win and the Congress, with 122 seats, easily gets two seats.

But it has pitched a third candidate, GC Chandrashekhar, whom it expects to elect to the Rajya Sabha by roping in seven rebels from the Janata Dal (Secular) and independents. The JD(S) has petitioned the Karnataka High Court to bar its rebel MLAs from voting, while their disqualification petition is pending before the Speaker.

In Maharashtra and Gujarat, the projected candidates will be elected unopposed because there is no contest. In Maharashtra, three BJP candidates — Narayan Rane, Prakash Javdekar and V Muralidharan — will enter the Upper House, while Kumar Ketkar of the Congress and one seat each to the NCP and the Shiv Sena is already decided. In Gujarat too, two seats each have gone to the Congress and the BJP.

In Odisha, the ruling BJD will comfortably win all the three seats while in West Bengal, the incumbent Trinamool Congress has the numbers to win four seats. It has ensured the victory of Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress by transferring its superfluous votes to the Congress’s kitty.

In BJP-ruled Rajasthan, there will be no election for the three party candidates — Bhupender Yadav, Madanlal Saini and Kirorilal Meena. There is, similarly, no contest in 3 other BJP-ruled States — Haryana, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. In Jharkhand, the two millionaires from the Congress and the BJP’s Dheeraj Sahu and Pradeep Senthalia would battle it out, and the BJP attempt to win the second seat.

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