New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday (October 28) took aim at the Congress party, which has fared poorly in the Legislative Council elections held in Bihar and Karnataka. He wrote on X that elections for 28 Member of Legislative Council (MLC) seats took place in four states using “paper ballots”, and then he asked, “Guess how many seats Congress won?” These elections were held in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra as well, but the Congress did not contest in the former and in the latter, the party delivered a sizeable upset to the BJP by winning the Nagpur seat – where the RSS headquarters are.The Congress party hit back at the prime minister over his remarks, with party MP Pawan Khera saying that if the prime minister had “confidence” in the paper vote, the country should switch to paper ballots for all elections.The prime minister’s question was meant to send the message that the Congress party does not win elections in which paper ballots are used. This was a dig at the opposition party’s longstanding demand to switch from Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) to ballot papers for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.MLC elections in 28 seats across 4 big states – Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Karnataka.Elections held using ballot papers.Guess how many seats Congress won? 🧐— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) October 28, 2026The BJP has raised the same demand to switch to ballot papers from EVMs before it came to power in 2014.MLC polls become ‘prestige’ issue, PM claims 2029 Lok Sabha ‘victory’The MLC election appears to have become a prestige issue for all parties, but especially the BJP, after it scored losses in a couple of key constituencies in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh and clocked wins in Karnataka.Also read: Akhilesh Yadav’s SP Makes Gains in Uttar Pradesh Council Polls, Puts BJP on NoticeOverall, the Congress party contested on 12 of the 28 seats – 5 in Bihar, 3 in Maharashtra, 4 in Karnataka and none in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP, on the other hand, contested 21 of the 28 MLC seats – 11 in Uttar Pradesh, 4 in Bihar, 3 in Karnataka and 3 in Maharashtra.While the Congress scored the Nagpur seat in Maharashtra, the BJP won 5 in Uttar Pradesh, 3 in Karnataka and 1 in Bihar.The Congress faced an upset in Karnataka, where the BJP-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance won all 4 seats it contested on, including one it has wrested away from the Congress.The BJP, too, has been caught off-guard in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra. In the western state, Nagpur is the home city of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and includes a part of Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s Lok Sabha seat.What is more, the Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA) won 3 of the 5 Graduates’ and Teachers’ seats in Maharashtra, leading the BJP’s top leadership to go into a huddle and issue statements about “introspection”. The ruling Mahayuti alliance secured two seats. The MVA has kept up its demands for returning to ballot-based voting.“The bubble of Modi and Fadnavis has burst. MVA has registered a resounding victory in three seats in the Legislative Council elections,” Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal wrote on X.In Bihar, Naval Kishor Yadav, who held the Patna Teachers’ seat for 30 years for the party, lost this time to the Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD). Newcomer Jun Suraaj has scored one win. One seat has gone to an Independent.Further, the Samajwadi Party, a member of the INDIA bloc, has secured 5 seats in Uttar Pradesh, as against the BJP’s 6. But the prestigious Varanasi Teachers’ constituency and the Agra-Aligarh Teachers’ constituencies have gone to Samajwadi Party.The Varanasi Teachers’ seat, secured by Lal Bihari Yadav, is significant although it is a seat the Samajwadis held already, because the Lok Sabha seat has been won by Modi thrice, in the 2014, 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Further, the BJP had to give up the Varanasi Graduates’ seat to the Samajwadi Party’s Ashutosh Sinha, making it a big loss for the ruling party.Ever since the results in Varanasi were announced, Akhilesh Yadav has been milking its psychological impact on the BJP, writing on X: “Lucknow waley Dilli walon ka phone nahi utha rahey hain – the chief minister is not ready to face the prime minister after this election result.”In fact, BJP workers protested at a counting centre after their defeat, ANI reports, saying there had been irregularities. Reports said there were arguments between BJP workers and police.And at the same time, the BJP posted several times from its official handle on the night of October 28, alleging that the Congress protests only when it loses elections, while remaining silent (on EVMs or voter lists) when it wins.Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav had earlier alleged that the Election Commission was refusing it a certificate of victory on the Varanasi Teachers’ seat despite the result being in its favour.“The results are ready, but the certificate isn’t being issued. The Election Commission has one last chance to prove its impartiality; otherwise, it should resign because it has failed in conducting the vote count,” he wrote on X.The Samajwadi Party also alleged wrongdoing on the Gorakhpur seat, won by the BJP candidate, Dhruv Tripathi, by the narrowest margin in this round of polls, just 2,390 votes. The counting on this seat reportedly took over 32 hours – fewer than 30,000 votes were cast in total in this seat.Gorakhpur was the Lok Sabha seat held by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, and is strongly associated with his political life.Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya accepted that the BJP had maintained its baseline strength, but performed below expectations.“BJP has repeated its previous performance. We were expecting to win even more seats, but we did not. SP won where it should not have. We will introspect. We will make efforts to ensure that the BJP wins once again in the forthcoming elections,” he said, as per reports.However, even as the mixed bag of results arrvied, Modi claimed that the 2029 Lok Sabha victory will be determined by Wednesday’s outcome.“I can say today with full confidence that we will win the 2029 election too, shattering all previous records,” the party tweeted, attributing the remark to Modi, from its official handle.MLC poll ballot system is not like in Assembly, Lok Sabha electionsThe results aside, MLC polls do not use “paper ballots” in the way the Prime Minister’s post on X might indicate. For example, in Uttar Pradesh’s MLC polls the votes cast do not represent the sentiment of every voter in the state, or even most of them on the 11 seats.This is because these elections involve only a limited set of constituencies and have a different electorate. The constituencies are also differently designed; as regional electoral areas and not as individual Assembly seats.This round of MLC polls covered 14 graduates’ constituencies and 14 teachers’ constituencies across all four states. Voters must specially register for just the MLC polls – the regular voter lists do not apply in these elections.The fact that graduates and teachers were voting (not all, but a limited number who qualify) makes this round especially relevant, since there have been six months of protests by youth and students over exam irregularities and against the Election Commission over “disenfranchising” 13 crore voters during its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists.This MLC election, too, faced allegations of irregularity and favouritism by the Election Commission in Uttar Pradesh. However, the election preparation process for MLC polls is separate from the SIR.The MLC voting system is preference based and not based on the one person–one vote sytem followed in elections for legislative assembly or to Lok Sabha seats, regardless of whether EVMs or paper ballots are used.Further, in the ballot system used during MLC elections, voters do not simply pick the one candidate they choose. Instead, they mark their first, second, third preferences and so on, depending on their choice.These ‘choices’ of voters are transferable in MLC polls. If a candidate secures a high number of votes, the votes other candidates have secured are transferred to them. Similarly, if a candidate gets very few votes, their votes are transferred to a better-off candidate.PM projects 2029 victory from MLC polls, opposition raises demandsCongress’s Khera laid out the demands of his party when it comes to the country’s voting system. He wrote on X while sharing the PM’s post that the country should migrate to conducting Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections by ballot paper since the PM had expressed faith in the system. If Narendra Modi is so confident that EVMs have no bearing on election results, let him prove his confidence in the BJP’s electoral prowess through action, not rhetoric.1. Commit to conducting all Lok Sabha and upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections by ballot paper going forward.2. Suspend SIR and restore the 13.3 crore voters illegally deleted from the electoral rolls.3. Terminate Gyanesh Gupta.4. Repeal the law that gives life long immunity to Gyanesh Gupta.Until Modi acts on these demands, his claims are nothing but hogwash – hollow words no one can take seriously.— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) October 28, 2026The offical results of the Uttar Pradesh MLC polls are as follows:Official results on the 5 graduates’ constituenciesMeerut Graduates’ Constituency – Dinesh Kumar Goyal (Bharatiya Janata Party) won by securing a total of 24,929 votes. His closest rival, Pramendra Singh Bhati, Adv. (Samajwadi Party), secured 12,073 votes.Agra Graduates’ Constituency – Dr. Manvendra Pratap Singh, ‘Guru Ji’ (Bharatiya Janata Party), won by securing a total of 42,743 votes. His closest rival, Shashank Yadav alias ‘Sheetu’ (Samajwadi Party), secured 27,734 votes before being eliminated from the contest.Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates’ Constituency – Dr. Man Singh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) won by securing a total of 60,358 votes. His closest rival, Ashok Kumar Rathore (Bharatiya Janata Party), secured 32,695 votes.Lucknow Graduates’ Constituency – Kanti Singh (Samajwadi Party) won by securing a total of 56,905 votes. Her closest rival, Er. Avnish Kumar Singh (Bharatiya Janata Party), secured 39,778 votes.Varanasi Graduates’ Constituency – Ashutosh Sinha (Samajwadi Party) won by securing a total of 55,046 votes. His closest rival was Kedarnath Singh (Bharatiya Janata Party), who secured 35,114 votes before being eliminated from the contest.Results on the 6 teachers’ constituencies:Lucknow Teachers’ Constituency – Umesh Dwivedi (Bharatiya Janata Party) won by securing a total of 13,179 votes. His closest rival was Sushil Kumar (Samajwadi Party), who secured 8,371 votes before being eliminated from the contest.Varanasi Teachers’ Constituency – Lal Bihari Yadav (Samajwadi Party) won by securing a total of 11,612 votes. His closest rival was Dr. Pramod Kumar Mishra (Bharatiya Janata Party), who secured 6,597 votes.Agra Teachers’ Constituency – Dr. Akash Agarwal (Samajwadi Party) won by securing a total of 14,046 votes. His closest rival was Hari Kishore Tiwari (Bharatiya Janata Party), who secured 9,783 votes before being eliminated from the contest.Meerut Teachers’ Constituency – Shrichand Sharma (Bharatiya Janata Party) won by securing a total of 18,099 votes. His closest rival was Dr. Nitin Tomar (Samajwadi Party), who secured 4,858 votes.Bareilly-Moradabad Teachers’ Constituency – Dr. Hari Singh Dhillon (Bharatiya Janata Party) won by securing a total of 21,672 votes. His closest rival was Haji Danish Akhtar (Samajwadi Party), who secured 3,996 votes.Gorakhpur-Faizabad Teachers’ Constituency – Dhruv Kumar Tripathi (Bharatiya Janata Party) won by securing a total of 16,790 votes. His closest rival was Rajiv Yadav (independent), who secured 14,580 votes before exiting the contest.This story will be updated once the results on all 28 seats are known.