New Delhi, Jul 06, 2022, TRIPURATIMES Desk

New Delhi, Jul 6: For the first time in 135 years, the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council will have no member from the Congress.

Deepak Singh, the lone Congress MLC in the 100-member Upper House retires on Wednesday.

Congress leader Motilal Nehru became a member of this House in February 1909. He is considered the first member of Congress in the Legislative Council. 

Since then, this is the first time that there will be no Congress representative in the UP Upper House, officials said.

The development has impacted the morale of Congress workers who are yet to recover from the party’s dismal performance in the recent assembly polls in which it won just two seats. The UP Assembly has 403 seats.

The party has not even appointed a new state president since then.

The Congress, which is going through its worst phase, is not in a position to send any of its representatives to the Legislative Council this time, because in the last assembly elections, it had won only two seats in the 403-member assembly.

Terming it sad, Congress Legislature Party leader Aradhana Mishra Mona said, "It's sad that the country's oldest party's representation in the Upper House will become zero. But it is a democracy and the mandate of the people is paramount."

She expressed confidence that the party would try to send its members to the Upper House by working hard in the Legislative Council elections to be held from local bodies and teachers quota.

The Legislative Council was formed in the Uttar Pradesh province on January 5, 1887, and the first meeting was held on January 8, 1887, at ‘Thornhill Memorial Hall Allahabad’. Since then, the Council has always had Congress representatives.

Initially, this house used to have only nine members. But in the year 1909, under the provisions of the Indian Council Act, the number of members of the Legislative Council increased to 46.

The British India’s United Province Council came into existence with 60 members through a Government of India Act of 1935. It later turned into UP Vidhan Parishad in 1950. Congress was a part of the state’s Upper House since 1935.

UP Vidhan Parishad has 100 seats, of which 38 are to be nominated by the UP legislative assembly members while 36 members are to be selected through the local bodies. 

Eight members each are selected through the graduate and teachers’ constituency elections while the remaining 10 members are nominated by the governor on the recommendation of the state cabinet.

After a stupendous victory in the 2022 UP Assembly elections, the BJP has become even stronger with 72 seats in its kitty.

As per Vidhan Parishad records, 15 members are set to retire over the next couple of months. Of these, 10 are from Samajwadi Party, two each from BJP and BSP and one from Congress. With BSP’s three MLCs retiring on July 6, the party will be left with just one member.

A total of 10 members are retiring from the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council on Wednesday, including Jagjivan Prasad, Balram Yadav, Dr Kamlesh Kumar Pathak, Ranvijay Singh, Ramsunder Nishad and Shatruddha Prakash of the Samajwadi Party (SP).

Apart from this, the tenure of Bahujan Samaj Party’s Atar Singh Rao, Suresh Kumar Kashyap and Dinesh Chandra also ends on Wednesday.

The tenure of two members of the Bharatiya Janata Party also ends today. 

However, both the BJP members - Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and Minister Chaudhary Bhupendra Singh - have already been re-elected to the Legislative Council.