lucknow all 10 candidates of the bjp including prime minister narendra modis trusted bureaucrat arvind kumar sharma filed their nominations for the legislative council polls on mondaythe nominations were filed in the presence of uttar pradesh chief minister yogi adityanath and other senior leaders including deputy chief minister keshav maurya and cabinet minister mahendra singhthe bjp put up a show of strength as a long cavalcade of party nominees and a good number of slogan raising workers drove from party office to vidhan bhawan where the nomination process was executed besides arvind sharma the other nine party candidates include state unit chief swatantra dev singh deputy cm dinesh sharma bjp state vicepresidents salil bishnoi and laxman acharya state general secretaries govind shukla and ashwini tyagi member of state executive surendra chaudhary chairman of mati kala board dharamveer prajapati and exworking chairman of vidhan parishad kunwar manvendra singh with this it became clear that the saffron outfit was unwilling to field an additional candidate and intended to play safe in a bid to avoid any sort of setback ahead of the panchayat elections and subsequently in the state assembly elections due next year bjp and its ally apna dal together have a strength of 319 legislators which is enough for election of 10 candidates only each candidate requires 32 votes to make it through this is in sharp contrast to the samajwadi party which has fielded two candidates ahmad hasan and rajendra chaudhary despite not having enough numbers the sp has 49 mlas which means that the party would have 17 votes to spare even though it is unsure of the support from two of its mlas shivpal yadav who has formed his own political outfit pragatisheel samajwadi party lohia and nitin agarwal who is hobnobbing with the saffron party after his father and former sp national general secretary naresh agarwal switched over to the bjp camp