SP rebel candidate Nitin Agarwal elected as Deputy Speaker

Lucknow: SP rebel candidate Nitin Agarwal, backed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, was elected as the Deputy speaker of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Monday. Agarwal, won the position, by defeating Narendra Verma, the official candidate of Akhilesh Yadav’s party, by a huge margin of 244 votes.

 

From the total 368 votes, Agarwal secured 304 votes, while Verma got only 60 votes in the polling held in the assembly premises by ballot paper. Four votes were declared invalid. Opposition party MLAs from BSP and Congress boycotted the election.

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Nitin Agarwal, a third-term MLA from Hardoi,  was elected as a legislator on the Samajwadi Party ticket but then cozied up to the ruling BJP. He is the son of former state minister Naresh Agarwal who had switched over to the BJP from the Samajwadi Party. Uttar Pradesh is getting its first Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, after a gap of over 14 years.