UP MLC Results 2026: SP Wins Varanasi Teachers’ Seat, Leads

Lucknow/Varanasi, October 28: In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own constituency, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has had a good day. It has kept the Varanasi Teachers’ seat in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council and is ahead in the Varanasi Graduates’ constituency, in a counting round that otherwise went the BJP’s way in several other parts of the state.

Varanasi: a two-seat showing

In the Teachers’ constituency, the SP’s sitting MLC Lal Bihari Yadav defeated BJP candidate Pramod Kumar Mishra by 4,898 votes, retaining the seat.

In the Graduates’ constituency, SP’s Ashutosh Sinha is leading BJP’s Kedar Nath Singh, and reports describe the party as heading for a decisive win. An early count showed him ahead by 1,495 votes. A final declaration was awaited at the time of writing, so the margin may change.

The wider picture

The elections covered 11 seats, five Graduates’ and six Teachers’ constituencies. The overall picture is mixed.

BJP: It won the Meerut Graduates’ seat, where Dinesh Goyal won by 12,688 votes, and the Meerut Teachers’ seat, along with the Lucknow Teachers’ and Bareilly-Moradabad Teachers’ constituencies. Reports put its tally at four to five seats, with a lead in at least one more.
SP: Besides Varanasi, it won the Agra Teachers’ seat, and in the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ constituency, its Mansingh Yadav led BJP’s Ashok Rathore by 27,157 votes to 7,648 after five rounds.

Counts and tallies differ between reports as results were still coming in, so final figures may vary.

Why Varanasi matters

Varanasi is the Prime Minister’s parliamentary constituency, and that gives the SP’s result an outsized symbolic value. The party will point to it as a sign that educated voters, teachers and graduates are not with the BJP, and it comes with the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections not far away.

SP leaders and analysts have in the past linked such results to anger among young people over joblessness, though that is the party’s reading and not a finding. The BJP has argued after earlier MLC contests that it did well across the state even where it lost particular seats.

It is not a new pattern in Varanasi. In the last round of these elections in December 2020, the SP also won both the Teachers’ seat, through Lal Bihari Yadav, and the Graduates’ seat, through Ashutosh Sinha, so this year’s result is the SP holding on to both rather than breaking new ground.

A caution about reading too much into it

Teachers’ and Graduates’ constituencies have small, specialised electorates made up of registered teachers and graduates. They do not mirror the general public, and turnout is low compared with Assembly elections. Parties also tend to treat them as a test of organisation and local networks. The results are a useful signal, but they are not a forecast for 2027.

What to watch

The final result in Varanasi, the remaining seats, how the SP and the BJP interpret the outcome, and whether the exercise changes the mood in either camp ahead of next year’s Assembly polls.