Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is heading to a clean sweep in the biennial MLC polls (local bodies) as the counting of votes for the 27 seats the voting for which was held on Saturday is underway.

Earlier, Chief Electoral Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla had said that the authorised election results would be announced by Tuesday evening only. However, the advance trends available from districts show the BJP is leading with a majority of 27 seats while independents may also win 2-3 seats.

Also read: AICTE asks varsities to help Ukraine returnees pursue higher studies

The Samajwadi Party (SP), the principal opposition party, may not open its account.

It is reported that the BJP has already won nine of the 36 seats with its candidates having been declared unopposed before the voting to the remaining 27 seats was held on Saturday with over 98 per cent voter turnout.

Also read: US monitoring rise in human rights abuses in India: Antony Blinken

The 98.11% of 1,20,657 voters, who exercised their franchise in these polls included village pradhans, members and chairpersons of the kshetra and zila panchayats, corporators/nagar palika members. There were 95 candidates in the fray.

With this the BJP appears all set to get majority in the 100-member upper house (Vidhan Parishad) too after it got a thumping majority in the lower house following announcement of results for the assembly elections last month.

Also read: US State Department revises COVID advisory for diplomatic staff

In the 100-member Upper House, the BJP currently has 34 MLCs, the Samajwadi Party 17 and the Bahujan Samaj Party four. The Congress, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and NISHAD party have one member each in the House.

The BJP tally in the parishad may now double, making it the single largest party in the upper house after a very long time.

Also read: US monitoring rise in human rights abuses in India: Antony Blinken

As many as 27 seats for which voting was held on Saturday are Moradabad-Bijnor, Rampur-Bareilly, Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur, Sitapur, Lucknow-Unnao, Raebareli, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Barabanki, Bahraich, Gonda, Faizabad, Bast-Siddhartnagar, Gorakhpur-Maharajganj, Deoria, Azamgarh-Mau, Balia, Ghazipur, Janupur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Jhansi-Jalaun-Lalitpur, Kanpur-Fatehpur, Etawah-Farrukhabad, Agra-Firozabad, Meerut-Ghaziabad and Muzaffarnagar-Saharanpur.

Also read: With US-India relations hanging in balance, Biden-Modi discuss Russian oil

In eight constituencies, nine candidates were elected unopposed: Badaun, Hardoi, Kheri, Mirzapur-Sonbhadra, Banda-Hamirpur, Aligarh, Bulandshahr, Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri while two candidates were elected unopposed from Mathura-Etah-Mainpuri constituency while one each was elected from seven others.