Ashutosh Sinha and Ritika Dubey File First MLC Nominations

Sitting graduate-constituency Member of Legislative Council Ashutosh Sinha of the Samajwadi Party filed his nomination on Thursday at the Varanasi commissioner complex, and independent aspirant Ritika Dubey filed papers for the teachers constituency, opening the first formal candidacies after two days when hopefuls only collected forms.

Nomination work is running under election officer and divisional commissioner S. Rajalingam. Graduate-seat papers are being taken in the additional commissioner (administration) court room inside the campus; teachers-seat candidates use a separate court room. Security around the commissioner gate has been tightened so that only candidates and a fixed number of proposers enter after checks at the Vikas Bhawan-facing entrance.

Sinha is the sitting MLC from the Varanasi graduate seat; his current term ends on 6 December. The Samajwadi Party has again named him for the seat. On the Bharatiya Janata Party side, Kedarnath Singh has been projected for the same graduate constituency; he has served as MLC from the seat earlier and lost to Sinha in the last cycle. Singh's formal filing was still awaited in Thursday's public account.

For the teachers seat, Dubey's independent filing came after she had collected the form earlier in the week. The BJP has named Pramod Kumar Mishra and the Samajwadi Party has named sitting MLC Lal Bihari Yadav for that constituency; several other independents have also taken forms. Over the first two days, 20 people collected graduate-seat forms and 10 collected teachers-seat forms, but Wednesday closed with no papers actually filed. Thursday's two filings therefore mark the start of the formal candidate list.

The Election Commission schedule keeps nominations open through 6 October. Scrutiny is listed for 7 October, withdrawals through 9 October, polling on 23 October from 8 am to 4 pm, and counting on 27 October. Deposit rules remain Rs 10,000 for general candidates and Rs 5,000 for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates.

Graduate and teachers constituencies cut across several districts in the Varanasi division and use eligibility rolls distinct from Assembly rolls. Campaign contact therefore runs through colleges, teacher associations and graduate networks rather than booth-level Assembly machinery alone. Issues already audible on the teachers side include pension parity and service security; on the graduate side, employment and exam-related concerns dominate early conversations.

Administration teams are also lining up polling-station and counting plans while nominations continue. Until 6 October closes, the candidate count can still rise. What Thursday locked into the public record is narrower and clearer: Sinha's graduate nomination, Dubey's teachers nomination, and the commissioner-campus process now receiving actual papers instead of only issue forms.