Cross-voting to 2027 polls: Why Akhilesh dropped plan to put up third RS candidate | Political Pulse News
Days after indicating that it would field its third candidate for the October 16 Rajya Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party (SP) decided against the move Tuesday, the last day of filing nominations, paving the way for the party’s two nominees and the ruling BJP’s eight candidates to get elected to the Upper House unopposed.
The SP’s last-minute decision was driven by a combination of factors involved in its attempts to cobble together the numbers needed for a third candidate’s win, with the high-stakes state Assembly elections just over four months away.
SP president and ex-UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s rethink on the matter came a day after senior party MLA Ravidas Mehrotra indicated that the party had completed formalities to put up its third candidate for the Upper House polls for 10 vacant seats from UP.
On Tuesday morning, however, Akhilesh, in an X post, said, “Now our eyes are not on three but on 403 seats,” signalling that the party has shifted its focus to the Assembly polls due in February 2027.
His move, ending week-long political suspense, made it clear that there would not be any contest between the BJP and the SP for the Rajya Sabha polls now. The BJP and the SP have enough numbers to comfortably win seven and two seats respectively.
SP’s calculations
The SP has already fielded party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, who is seeking his sixth term in the Rajya Sabha, and Reliance executive Dhananjay Nathwani.
Nathwani, 40, is the son of Parimal Nathwani, Director, Corporate Affairs for Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), who was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand as an NDA-backed Independent in the June 2026 election, securing his fourth consecutive term in the Upper House.
Currently, there are 396 MLAs in the 403-member UP Assembly, with each Rajya Sabha candidate requiring 37 first-preference votes to win.
The SP has 101 MLAs. However, its effective strength is 100 as Chail MLA Puja Pal, who continues to figure in the House records as an SP member, has switched to the BJP and is currently its state vice-president. With the support of two Congress MLAs, the SP has 102 votes – nine short of the first-preference votes required to ensure the victory of its third candidate.
SP sources said that the party’s calculations following the BJP’s decision to field its eighth candidate became a key factor in the SP’s rethink. Some BJP MLAs were in touch with the SP but showed hesitance to rebel openly months before polls, sources claimed.
BJP play
The BJP has 255 MLAs with its NDA allies adding another 33 members: Apna Dal (S) 13, RLD 9, SBSP 6, and NISHAD Party 5. With the support of Puja Pal, unaffiliated MLAs Manoj Pandey, Rakesh Pratap Singh, and Abhay Singh – who were expelled from the SP in June 2025 for cross-voting in the 2024 Rajya Sabha polls – and two MLAs of the Raja Bhaiyya-led Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik), the NDA’s effective tally stands at 294 – just two short of the required 296 (37 for each) first-preference votes to ensure a win for all its eight candidates.
The BJP named its eight candidates Monday, dropping Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and B L Verma from its list. Its nominees include Dharampal Singh, Radhakant Ojha, Prakash Pal, Vidyasagar Sonkar, Gopi Krishna Pandey, Priyanka Singh Rawat, Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan and Shruti Gangwar.
Assembly poll factor
The BJP appears confident of managing the two additional votes required for its eighth candidate, even as the possibility of cross-voting by some NDA MLAs is not ruled out within the ruling camp too.
The presence of the third SP nominee would have led to a contest for the election of 11 candidates for 10 seats. This would have led to “cross-voting” among the MLAs, which would have “favoured the BJP more”, said an SP insider. “Considering the vindictive nature of the ruling camp, several of its legislators despite being unhappy were hesitant and even fearful to reveal themselves at this stage. We decided to respect their decision and instead aim for the bigger target of the 2027 elections,” the party insider said.
For the SP, the numbers game was tighter. Its leaders said that in the final analysis, while the party required at least nine additional first-preference votes to push through its third nominee, the BJP needed only two additional votes to secure the victory of its eighth candidate.
Thus the arithmetic made the extra-candidate gamble considerably more difficult for the SP than the BJP, especially given the nature of voting in the Rajya Sabha polls.
Unlike a conventional secret ballot, the Rajya Sabha elections use an open-ballot system for the MLAs, who are required to show their marked ballots to an authorised party agent. The SP leaders said this made it difficult to rely on cross-voting by even those NDA MLAs who it claimed were in touch with them.
With the Assembly elections round the corner, several MLAs were said to be unwilling to risk open defiance of their parties at this stage, when the candidate selection for the 2027 polls has yet to get underway.
