New Delhi: In elections to 11 Uttar Pradesh legislative council seats, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has won five and Samajwadi Party, three. The latter won two out of three seats in Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency.Polls to 11 seats in the state’s Upper House were conducted in December 1. Six of these seats are reserved for teachers and five for graduates.According to reports, 199 candidates from BJP, SP and the Congress were in the fray to become members of the legislative council (MLCs). The counting started on Thursday and results to all seats except one have been announced.The results will not affect SP’s dominance in the legislative council, where it had held 52 seats against BJP’s 19. However, the ruling party’s showing certainly heralds it aggressive posture as it moves towards Panchayat elections next year and then, the 2022 assembly polls.Independent candidate, from Gorakhpur-Faizabad division, Dhruv Kumar Tripathi flashes a victory sign after winning the MLC elections, in Gorakhpur, Friday, Dec. 4, 2020. Photo: PTIPTI reported that BJP has won three out of the six teachers’ seats from Lucknow, Meerut and Bareilly-Moradabad, whose results were declared on Friday. While independents won two seats, SP got its lone teachers’ seat in Varanasi.This was the first time that BJP had contested a teachers’ constituency and its strong showing is likely to further impact “teachers’ politics” in the state, said a report in The Hindustan Times.The BJP candidate’s win against 87-year-old veteran Om Prakash Sharma in the Meerut teacher’s seat, was a manifestation of this impact. Sharma had been winning this seat since 1970.“The results would impact teachers’ politics both inside and outside the UP Legislative Council,” S.K. Dwivedi, retired head of the department of political science in Lucknow University told HT.Among the four graduates’ seats, BJP won from Agra and Meerut, while SP added to their tally in Allahabad-Jhansi and Varanasi divisions. Both the graduates’ seats won by SP were earlier held by BJP, but the saffron party also won from Agra, which had earlier elected an SP candidate.NDTV stated that despite a favourable tally for BJP, the gains by SP in the ruling party’s stronghold in Varanasi has been surprising. Both the seats that SP won in Varanasi “It’s a big victory. I am happy with our result,” Lal Bihari Yadav, the Samajwadi Party candidate in the Varanasi Division Teachers’ Constituency said.The results of the last Lucknow graduates’ seat is expected late on Sunday night, as per UP chief electoral officer Ajay Kumar Shukla.Note: This article will be updated when the results of all the seats are out.