UP Legislative Council polls: BJP wins six of 11 seats, SP five, after an Agra repoll, six suspensions and a voter-list row

Update, October 30: final results. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won six of the 11 seats and the Samajwadi Party (SP) five, according to the results released by the chief electoral officer's office (Deccan Herald, The Economic Times). The BJP won the Agra and Meerut Graduates' seats and the Lucknow, Meerut, Bareilly-Moradabad and Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers' seats; the SP won the Allahabad-Jhansi, Lucknow and Varanasi Graduates' seats and the Varanasi and Agra Teachers' seats (ABP Live). The SP's Man Singh Yadav had the biggest margin, 27,663 votes, in Allahabad-Jhansi, and its Akash Agrawal won the Agra Teachers' seat, where the repoll was held, by 4,263 votes (The Times of India). Before the polls the BJP held six seats, the SP three and Independents two, so the SP gained two and the Independents lost both (The Economic Times). The SP took the Lucknow Graduates' seat from the BJP, and Mathrubhumi reports the party's candidate selection and local mobilisation came under scrutiny after the Varanasi and Lucknow results (Mathrubhumi). BJP MLC Devendra Pratap Singh wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner on October 29 alleging tampering in the Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers' count, which the BJP's Dhruv Kumar Tripathi won, and asking for repolling at three booths and a recount; these are his allegations, and the reports read give no response from the officials named (India Today).

Counting of votes for 11 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council began at 8 am on Tuesday, October 27, four days after polling on Friday, October 23, The Times of India reports. None of the sources read for this piece reported a result by 13:37 IST. The vote has been followed by three separate disputes: a repoll at three Agra booths after the Samajwadi Party alleged booth capturing, six officials ordered suspended by the Election Commission of India (ECI), and a row over garbled names in the voter list that has drawn the state's chief electoral officer into a public exchange with opposition leaders. This piece sets out what each source says and where they differ.

The reporting below is as of 13:37 IST on Tuesday, October 27. Results came in on October 28 and 29 and are in the update above.

The election

• Seats: five Graduates' constituencies (Lucknow, Varanasi, Agra, Meerut, Allahabad-Jhansi) and six Teachers' constituencies (Lucknow, Varanasi, Agra, Meerut, Bareilly-Moradabad, Gorakhpur-Faizabad), according to Asianet Newsable, carrying an ANI report.
• Size: 152 candidates, 14,81,310 registered voters and 2,697 polling stations across 72 districts; Kanpur Nagar, Kanpur Dehat and Unnao were excluded, Mangalorean.com reports. It describes the main contest as between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), with independents and party rebels also in the race.
• Counting: Legislative Council seats are filled by the single transferable vote, so counting may take longer than in an ordinary election, and returning officers were told to keep extra staff in reserve, The Times of India reports.

Agra Teachers' seat: allegations, void booths and a repoll

On Saturday, October 24, the SP's state president Shyam Lal Pal gave the chief electoral officer (CEO) a memorandum, issued on the instructions of party chief Akhilesh Yadav, alleging booth capturing in Amroha, Agra, Fatehpur, Pratapgarh and Gorakhpur, India Today reports, citing the Press Trust of India (PTI). The memorandum named seven booths in Amroha, five in Agra and one each in Fatehpur and Pratapgarh, sought fresh polling there and asked for FIRs against those responsible. It also alleged that BJP ministers, MPs and MLAs influenced voting. The SP's chief spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary separately accused the ECI of acting as "a political worker for the BJP". The reports read here carry no BJP response to these allegations.

Akhilesh Yadav, who voted in Saifai, alleged on polling day that BJP workers had indulged in fake voting and that supporters of his party had been stopped from reaching booths, The Indian Express reports. ABP Live says Dr Akash Agrawal, the sitting member of the Council and the SP-backed candidate for the Agra Teachers' seat, alleged booth capturing and malpractice.

The same day, the ECI declared the voting at three polling stations of the Agra Teachers' constituency void and ordered a repoll, The Indian Express reports. The stations were No. 20 (the tehsil campus at Kheragarh), No. 21 (the Kshetra Panchayat office at Saiyan) and No. 26 (the Kshetra Panchayat office at Fatehabad). The CEO's office said the repoll was recommended on the returning officer's report. ThePrint, carrying PTI, says the original voting was declared void under Section 58A(2)(a) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The Commission also told the CEO that anyone involved in unlawful activities that may have vitiated the poll must not be deployed for the repoll, and asked the Agra Divisional Commissioner for an inquiry report by Sunday, The Indian Express reports.

The repoll was held from 8 am to 4 pm on Monday, October 26. The CEO said it was peaceful, and that the three stations recorded 57.16% turnout overall: 51.60% at No. 20, 58.23% at No. 21 and 58.65% at No. 26, according to ThePrint and The Times of India. The ECI voided three Agra stations; the SP's memorandum had named five in Agra, plus booths in other districts.

Six officials ordered suspended

On Monday the ECI directed the immediate suspension of six supervisory officers and disciplinary proceedings against 21 other personnel, in a letter to the CEO from ECI secretary Suman Kumar Das that cites the Agra Divisional Commissioner's report, Hindustan Times reports. The Commission said the officers had failed to ensure effective supervision and maintain proper control within and near the polling stations, and called the dereliction serious and not to be condoned, India Today reports.

According to the CEO's office, quoted by ThePrint (PTI), the six are:

• At Kshetra Panchayat office, Saiyan (station 21): sector magistrate OP Chak (the Agra district khadi and village industries officer), sector police officer Harisharan Singh (inspector, Crime Branch) and sub-inspector Sandeep Kumar (Etmaddaula police station).
• At Kshetra Panchayat office, Fatehabad (station 26): sector magistrate Vishal Rathore (range forest officer, Fatehabad), sector police officer Purushottam Pal (additional inspector, Fatehabad) and sub-inspector Sumit Tyagi.

The Commission directed that charge-sheets be prepared and draft copies sent to it for vetting within 10 days, with a compliance report to follow immediately. Disciplinary proceedings were ordered against two presiding officers, three polling officers, five head constables and 11 constables posted at stations 21 and 26, according to PTI and India Today.

Gorakhpur-Faizabad: the ECI replaces an observer

Separately, the ECI relieved Abhay, a 2007-batch IAS officer, as observer for the Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers' seat after BJP MLC Devendra Pratap Singh alleged irregularities, and appointed Prakash Bindu, a 2009-batch IAS officer, Hindustan Times reports. Mangalorean.com reports that the SP candidate there, Sanjay Tripathi, said on Tuesday that he was confident of winning, citing years of work and the support of teacher voters.

Counting day: disputes reported at some centres

Counting began at 8 am. Amar Ujala reports that at Navin Galla Mandi in Agra, where counting was under way, SP workers alleged they were being forcibly kept away from the counting site, and that police and officials were alerted and stepped in; a second Amar Ujala item about Agra counting carries a headline saying the SP was accused of creating needless ruckus (only the headline was available). Two other outlets' headlines, with their text not available to us, report trouble elsewhere: Aaj Tak says the seal of a ballot box was found broken during counting in Gorakhpur, and Dainik Jagran says a candidate and police clashed at the gate of the counting hall in Meerut over being stopped from carrying a mobile phone. This piece does not report what was found or decided in either case.

The voter-list name errors

The CEO's account on X said last week that, with online registration offered for these rolls for the first time, 158 entries out of more than 14.81 lakh had strange names for voters or their relatives, ThePrint reports. It said the software was meant to transliterate names typed in English into Hindi but translated them instead: "Ramhit Yadav", mistakenly typed as "Ram hit Yadav", came out as "Ram ne Yadav ko maara". Errors could have been corrected through an edit facility but some were not, and "there is always a possibility of mistakes when doing any task for the first time", it said. ThePrint adds that the Electoral Registration Officer (the divisional commissioner) and the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (the district magistrate) were asked for explanations, and that ECI officials told it the software was built in-house for these polls. The Times of India reports the CEO said another entry, "B.Com" in a father's-name field, appeared to be human error or negligence.

On Sunday, October 25, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh shared a video of AAP's Purvanchal leader Rajesh Yadav asking why "Ram" had hit a Yadav and not a Singh, Pathak or Sharma, and whether the computer was casteist, ThePrint reports. The CEO's account replied (late on Sunday night according to ThePrint, on Monday according to The Indian Express) that the roll also contained "Ram ne Sharma ko mara", and wrote, as The Indian Express quotes it: "Computers/software are not casteist. It is acceptable that we made a mistake, but fortunately, even during the mistake, there was no discrimination based on caste. We must also thank God that Ram did not kill any minority. Otherwise, in addition to being casteist, there would also be an accusation of being communal." The CEO's office posted a slip for Ravi Sharma, enrolled in the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates' roll, with that phrase in the father's-name column, Hindustan Times reports.

Singh called the CEO's language communal and, at a press conference in Lucknow, called him a "BJP agent", Outlook reports. At that press conference he also cited two other entries as examples: a father listed as "B. Com." and "Mohammad Iqbal Beg" recorded as "Mohammad Iqbal bheekh maangte hain". Of those, only the "B.Com" entry is confirmed in the other reports read here. Congress's Supriya Shrinate asked who was running the CEO's handle. The CEO's office replied that the ECI had instructed that statements be limited to facts, in restrained language, ThePrint reports.

On Tuesday, October 27, the chief electoral officer's account apologised. In a post on X, translated here from the Hindi, it said the tone and sharpness of the comments in the post it quoted were "not in keeping with the nature of communication expected from this official handle", that it had "well noted the real outrage" caused, and that it "sincerely apologise[d]" to those "shocked and angered", adding, "From now on our communication will be dignified and formal", TV9 Bharatvarsh reports. The outlet links the apology to the "Ram ne Sharma ko mara" reply; the post as quoted does not name the earlier post.

The CEO's office also said "some forged voter slips" had gone viral, were being shown by "many established media outlets and prominent persons", and that the person responsible for the forgery "will be dealt with as per law", The Economic Times reports. It urged people to verify anything about the voter list with officials before quoting it. The statement as quoted does not say which slips it means. Two days before polling, the CEO's office had said no voter would be deprived of voting on the basis of partial clerical or printing errors, and that the voter's identity would be verified, ThePrint reports.

A separate roll problem on the assembly side

Not part of the Council polls, but reported alongside them: in Pilibhit Sadar, "irregularities" were found in 10,470 entries of the assembly roll where different names allegedly appeared against the same EPIC number, and in Azamgarh 13 entries bore the name Vikas Yadav, The Indian Express reports. The CEO had ordered legal action against two electoral registration officers and ended the services of a computer assistant in Pilibhit. He then ordered a scrutiny of all Forms 6, 7 and 8 entered by computer assistants since the Special Intensive Revision ended on April 10, and told officials to remove duplicate entries before the draft roll for the Special Summary Revision is published on November 12, The Times of India reports at this link.

Where reports differ

• Names of the suspended officers: the PTI version carried by ThePrint and The Indian Express gives OP Chak and Harisharan Singh; Hindustan Times prints "OP Singh" and "Harisharan Das".
• Who faces disciplinary proceedings: PTI and India Today say two presiding officers and three polling officers plus 16 police personnel; Hindustan Times's text says five presiding officers, and ABP Live says "five other polling officials".
• Dates: polling was on Friday, October 23 according to the CEO and PTI; one Indian Express report on the suspensions refers to voting on "October 24".
• Slogan translation: outlets render "maara" as "hit" or "killed".
• Candidate's name: Mangalorean.com gives the SP candidate in Gorakhpur-Faizabad as Sanjay Tripathi; the ANI report on Asianet gives "Dr Sanjayan Tripathi".

What is not yet known

• Results of the 11 seats were not known when this was written; they are in the update at the top.
• What the Agra Divisional Commissioner's report found beyond the ECI's summary; the report itself was not published in the sources read.
• Whether any FIR has been registered on the booth-capturing allegations or on the "forged" slips.
• What was found or decided about the Gorakhpur ballot-box seal and the counting-hall disputes in Agra and Meerut.
• Whether the 158 faulty entries were the only ones, a figure that comes from the CEO's own account.