Lucknow, April 12 (Agency) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has maintained a dominating lead during the counting for 27 out of 36 seats of the Uttar Legislative Council on Tuesday. According to information given by the Chief Electoral Officer’s office counting started at 8 am amidst tight security arrangements. As per the early trends BJP candidates have maintained a decisive lead on Jaunpur, Lucknow-Unnao, Rae Bareli, Bahraich and Deoria seats though the formal announcement is yet to be made. As per the reports received from various district electoral officers BJP candidate on Lucknow-Unnao seat Ram Chandra Pradhan has received 3,487 and got a decisive lead. Similarly, party candidate on Bahraich-Shravasti Pragya Tripathi has got 3,188 votes and is way ahead of her nearest rival Amar Yadav of Samajwadi Party (SP). Report said that BJP candidate in RaeBareli seat Dinesh Pratap Singh has received 2,330 votes whereas his nearest rival and SP nominee Virendra Yadav got merely 130 votes.
In Deoria SP candidate Dr Kafeel accepted his defeat even before the result was announced and left the counting center. “Democracy has been defeated in Deoria. I was harassed unnecessarily by the administration in the name of inquiry, but even after that I received 1,031 votes. Will continue to serve the people,” he said before leaving the counting center. Here too BJP candidate Dr Ratan Pal Singh has maintained a decisive lead. In Barabanki after the final round of counting BJP candidate Angad Kumar Singh received 2,272 votes, whereas SP nominee Rajesh Kumar Singh got 527, independent Ram Dheeraj 7 and 21 votes were declared invalid. On other seats BJP candidates Ravi Shankar Singh ‘Pappu’ was leading in Ballia, Dr KP Srivastava in Allahabad, Dharmendra Bharadwaj in Meerut, Pawan Singh Chauhan in Sitapur and an Independent candidate Annapurna Singh in Varanasi.