The ruling BJP in a sudden move fielded its eighth candidate in the biennial Rajya Sabha polls on the last day of nominations on Thursday.
There are 11 candidates in the contest, 8 from BJP and three from SP.
BJP’s eighth candidate Sanjay Seth filed his nomination papers in presence of Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya and state BJP president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary along with other ministers here on Thursday.
According to officials, a candidate will require 37.3 first preference votes to get elected.
BJP and its allies have a total of 290 votes and 261 votes are required for the victory of seven candidates. The party has an additional 29 votes.
In this way BJP needs 8 more votes for the eighth seat. Sanjay Seth is an old SP leader and will try to make a dent in SP.
SP has 108 votes and it will get support of 2 members from Congress. It will require around 111 votes for the success of all its 3 candidates.
Earlier , SP MLA Pallavi Patel had expressed her displeasure over the candidates announced by the party.
She had alleged that party take votes from backward classes, dalits and minorities but these classes have been ignored in the Rajya Sabha polls.
Patel had announced not to vote for SP candidates. In such a situation, speculations are being made that BJP will be successful in making a dent in SP for its eighth candidate.
Seven BJP candidates had filed their nominations on Wednesday under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The party has fielded Naveen Jain, Sadhna Singh, RPN Singh, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Tejveer Singh, Amarpal Maurya and Sangeeta Balwant Bind as candidates.
SP has fielded 3 candidates which include Bollywood actor Jaya Bachchan, former Union Minister Ramji Lal Suman and former UP Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan.