LUCKNOW: The BJP has won five seats and the Samajwadi Party (SP) three in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council biennial elections, with counting continuing for the remaining three constituencies on Wednesday.The BJP retained the Meerut Graduates’ constituency, where Dinesh Kumar Goyal emerged victorious, while Manvendra Pratap Singh, popularly known as Guruji, won the Agra Graduates’ seat.In the Teachers’ constituencies, BJP candidates Umesh Dwivedi won from Lucknow, Shrichand Sharma from Meerut and Hari Singh Dhillon from Bareilly-Moradabad.The Samajwadi Party registered victories in three constituencies. Its candidate Man Singh Yadav defeated BJP’s Ashok Rathore by 27,663 votes in the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ constituency. Lal Bihari Yadav won the Varanasi Teachers’ seat, while Akash Agarwal emerged victorious from Agra Teachers’ constituency.In the Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers’ constituency, BJP candidate Dhruv Tripathi was leading Independent candidate Rajiv Yadav by 880 votes. Tripathi had secured 13,644 votes against Yadav’s 12,764 votes, according to the latest available trends.Reacting to the results, deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya acknowledged that the BJP had expected a better performance.“These elections are decided by highly educated and qualified voters. The BJP has repeated its previous performance, but we expected to win more seats. We will examine why we fell short,” Maurya said.Referring to the SP’s victories, he said the party would review how the opposition managed to win seats where the BJP had expected a favourable outcome.Maurya added that the BJP would analyse the results and work towards securing victories in future elections.
