The Samajwadi Party (SP) suffered a major setback in the Rajya Sabha elections held for 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh, eight of which were won by the BJP.

The SP could send only two out of its three candidates to the Upper House. Among the BJP members who benefited from the SP cross-voting was Sanjay Seth, who had been a Samajwadi Party treasurer and is not viewed still as an adversary of party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

Amid concerns over cross-voting, SP chief whip and Brahmin face of the party Manoj Pandey quit while polling was underway. Pandey is an MLA from Unchahar in Rae Bareli district.

Akhilesh said action would be taken against such MLAs. “The government machinery was used to intimidate the SP MLAs. You need to be very strong to vote against the BJP in the current situation. Maybe some of our MLAs were under pressure and preferred to go with them. Keeping in view the demand of our party leaders, we will take action against the rebel legislators,” he said.

“We had fielded our third candidate (Alok Ranjan) to test our real friends. The people may understand from this election who is with the PDA and who is not,” Akhilesh said.

The SP is campaigning across the state among the Peechra (Other Backward Caste), Dalit (Scheduled Caste) and Alpsankhyak (minorities). Akhilesh claims that the PDA make up 85 per cent of the total population of the state and is ready to support the INDIA bloc against the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.

“We congratulate our eight winners,” said Keshav Prasad Maurya, deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, after the results.

The voting was held from 9am to 4pm for the 10 vacant seats from Uttar Pradesh. The eight winners of the BJP were R.P.N. Singh, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Tejveer Singh, Sangeeta Balwant, Sadhana Singh, Amarpal Maurya, Naveen Jain and Sanjay Seth. The SP winners were Dalit leader Ramji Lal Suman and actor-MP Jaya Bachchan. Alok Ranjan, a former chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh, lost by 17 votes.

At least seven SP MLAs crossed the floor and voted for the BJP candidates. Besides Pandey, the other SP rebel MLAs were Abhay Singh from Gosainganj in Ayodhya, Puja Pal from Chayal in Kaushambi, Rakesh Pratap Singh from Gauriganj in Amethi, Vinod Chaturvedi from Kalpi in Jalone, Ashutosh Maurya from Bisauli in Badaun and Rakesh Pandey from Jalalpur in Ambedkar Nagar. They had indicated their move much before the counting was completed. They came to the balcony of the first floor of the Vidhan Sabha along with deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak around 5pm and showed the victory sign to the media.

However, Pandey’s move was unexpected. “I have resigned from the post of chief whip of the party,” Pandey said after voting for the BJP candidates.

Rakesh Pratap Singh said: “We seven SP MLAs voted for Sanjay Seth of the BJP. We decided against the party line because the SP is following Periyar.”

Periyar was a reformer who questioned Brahmin supremacy in the social hierarchy.

Singh didn’t elaborate but added: “No whip is effective in the Rajya Sabha election and we will remain MLAs of the SP,” he added.

Seth, a businessman, was brought into politics by the SP and was appointed its treasurer. Akhilesh had sent him to the Rajya Sabha in 2016. He joined the BJP in 2019 and remained in the Rajya Sabha till 2022.

Blow for BJP

In Congress-ruled Karnataka, however, it was a blow to the BJP with one of its MLAs, S.T. Somashekar cross-voting in favour of the Congress and another (Shivaram Hebbar) abstaining. The cross-voting, however, did not affect the chances of the BJP winning one of the four vacancies from the state. The Congress won the three other seats.

Additional reporting by J.P. Yadav