UP MLC Election Result 2026: SP Captures Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates' Seat — Dr Man Singh Yadav Wins by 27,663 Votes

Last night it looked like a contest. By Wednesday afternoon it was a landslide. The BJP's Ashok Kumar Rathore led the first round of counting in the Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates' constituency by 984 votes, but the Samajwadi Party's sitting MLC Dr Man Singh Yadav took the lead in round two and never looked back. He finished with 60.4% of the valid votes — comfortably above the quota — so he was elected on first preferences alone, with no second-preference counting needed.

Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates' MLC result 2026: full figures

Figures as reported by Dynamite News. Candidate votes add up exactly to the 99,886 valid votes. The quota — half the valid votes plus one — is 49,944 by our calculation; Man Singh Yadav crossed it by 10,414 votes. The 1,09,482 ballots counted differ slightly from the 1,09,392 votes reported after polling on 23 October.

How the count swung

Round figures as reported by Dynamite News and Patrika. One report put the SP's lead after round 2 at 50 votes rather than 150.

The first round turned out to be a poor guide. Ballots from all ten districts are mixed before counting in Council elections, so no district-wise result is available, and the first bundles of a round can still differ from the constituency as a whole. From round two onwards, every reported stage showed the SP pulling further ahead.

Why the result matters

• The SP holds its ground: This was one of the two graduates' seats the SP won in 2020, and Man Singh Yadav has now held it with a much bigger mandate.
• Prayagraj vs Bundelkhand: Before counting, the BJP had hoped that high turnout in Bundelkhand — Mahoba (55.77%), Jalaun (54.75%) and Jhansi (49.43%) — would outweigh low turnout in Prayagraj (32.86%), Man Singh Yadav's home district. The final margin of more than 27,000 suggests that calculation did not work for the BJP.
• A big invalid count: 9,596 ballots — almost one in eleven — were rejected, a reminder that preference voting with numbers rather than ticks trips up many voters. See how to mark a graduates' ballot correctly.

Counting-day controversy

On Tuesday afternoon, Man Singh Yadav alleged that BJP workers posing as agents of dummy candidates had entered the counting centre wearing saffron scarves. No official response to that allegation was reported. The result itself was not disputed by the BJP in the reports available at the time of writing.

This win takes the SP's tally to three seats where counting is complete — Varanasi Teachers', Agra Teachers' and Allahabad-Jhansi Graduates'. See the full UP MLC scoreboard and our round-1 report from Jhansi.