On Monday, BJP threw the ace up its sleeve. It announced three more candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh for 10 seats, after having announced only eight names earlier.

Many are calling the party’s fielding of 11 candidates against 10 seats a “masterstroke” meant to spoil BSP supremo Mayawati’s chances of winning an Upper House berth and also to disunite the state opposition ahead of the crucial 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

On the same day, the BJP also announced that SP leader Naresh Agarwal and his son Nitin, an MLA, were joining the party. The party’s two moves are now likely to make it a contest on two seats which the opposition was working hard to win, not to mention the horse-trading that will take place.

The arithmetic till now was something like this: A Rajya Sabha candidate would need the votes of 37 MLAs for victory. The BJP and its allies have 324 MLAs, when 296 are needed to elect eight candidates. The SP has 47 MLAs who can make one MP win. That leaves it with 10 extra votes. One other party with a precious vote is Nishad party.

The BJP had initially announced eight candidates, including Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, who was shifted from Gujarat to UP for another Rajya Sabha term. After ensuring the win of its eight official candidates with 296 votes, the BJP has 28 extra votes. Three independents, including the mighty Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya, are also with the party.

The eight BJP candidates – Jaitley, Dr Ashok Bajpai, Vijaypal Singh Tomar, Sakaldeep Rajbhar, Kanta Kardam, Dr Anil Jain, GVL Narsimha Rao and Harnath Singh Yadav – filed their nominations in the afternoon on the last day. Till noon on March 12, elections for the 10 Rajya Sabha candidates, including Jaya Bachchan (SP) and Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar (BSP), looked unopposed.

With support from the SP and Congress – which has seven members in the UP Assembly – and one vote of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), things seemed promising for the candidate of the BSP, which has 19 MLAs in the Assembly.

But Amit Shah had some surprises in store for his political opponents, and specially aimed at teaching the BSP chief a lesson for challenging the saffron might in Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati herself, in a surprise move, recently announced support to SP candidates for bypolls on the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats. In return, she bagged the one Rajya Sabha berth with the help of SP’s 10 extra votes.

The coming together of the two bitter rivals, SP and BSP, after 25 years has caused much discomfiture to Amit Shah & Co, specially when along with the Congress, RLD and other opposition parties they may throw a serious challenge to the BJP next year.

After filing of nominations by its eight candidates on the last day, the BJP surprised all by fielding prominent Ghaziabad-based business Anil Agarwal as its ninth candidate. Within an hour, it directed two more party candidates, Vidhya Sagar Sonkar and Salil Bishnoi, to join the Rajya Sabha fray.

In fact, the decision to field Anil Agarwal and the two others was linked to developments which had taken place in Delhi on the same day, Monday. A deal was in the making in Delhi with disgruntled SP Rajya Sabha member Naresh Agarwal, who was denied a ticket by SP’s Akhilesh Yadav to accommodate Bollywood actress Jaya Bachchan. Once a deal was struck, the BJP fielded three more candidates in quick succession on the last date of the nomination to spoil Mayawati’s game-plan.

The BJP’s pre-condition for letting Naresh Agarwal in was to bring his clan to the party fold. His son Nitin, who is an SP MLA from Hardoi, was made to join on the same day along with other family members. To tease Akhilesh and Mayawati further, Naresh was asked to announce his son’s support to BJP’s ninth Rajya Sabha candidate.

In politics, there are not many instances of cross-voting declared publicly and bluntly even before polling is held.

The BJP’s move has dealt a blow to the till now unopposed Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh. Mayawati’s Rajya Sabha berth arithmetic has gone haywire as she now has one vote less from the SP. Though “Babua” (as she fondly calls Akhilesh) can manage one vote for his “Bua” from Nishad Party, which supported the SP in the Lok Sabha bypolls, the fear of cross-voting lurks.

Moreover, after defection of Naresh Agarwal & Co and entry of Anil Agarwal as the ninth BJP candidate, the next ten days will probably witness exchanges of money and horse-trading to wrest the berth from Mayawati at any cost.

Such practices are not uncommon in UP’s politics. The state has many such instances to count during the Rajya Sabha polls in the past. Amit Shah, however, calls it his style of “political manoeuvring”.

BJP sources claim that Sonkar and Bishnoi are dummy candidates and are likely to withdraw their nominations on March 15, the last date of withdrawal by candidates. Anil Agarwal with money bags in hands will, however, remain in the fray as BJP’s ninth candidate.

After support from Nitin, the BJP needs to manage only five more votes to make its ninth candidate add up to its tally. With ace manipulator and master defector Naresh on its side, managing the required number of 37 votes appears not an impossible task.

A former Congressman, Naresh is not new to the BJP. He had saved the Kalyan Singh government in 1997 by forging defections in the Congress to form Loktantrik Congress Party. The man can’t live without power. Barring the RLD, he switched over to the SP and BSP when Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati and Akhiesh Yadav formed governments. His loyalty to power makes him “precious” for the BJP at this crucial juncture to take on the SP and BSP.

Feelers are being sent through Naresh to 7 MLAs of the Congress, which has announced support to BSP candidate Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. The BJP is also eyeing a couple of SP members, who are annoyed with Akhilesh and are loyal to his rebel uncle, Shivpal Singh Yadav. Both Shivpal and the BJP have a common cause – not to let the SP and BSP come together.

With 47 members in the UP Assembly, Akhilesh will ensure the victory of Jaya Bachchan for the fourth consecutive term but serious doubts are now being raised about his efforts to make the BSP candidate sail through in the fast-changing political equations.

Barring 1993 (with SP) and 1996 (Congress), Mayawati does not believe in pre-poll alliances. But a rattled BJP has only one agenda – not to allow the SP and BSP to come together for 2019.

Not to speak of the Lok Sabha bypoll results on two seats, if the BJP pulled a win from the BSP during the Rajya Sabha elections on March 23, it will certainly succeed in short-circuiting the new-found bonhomie between “Bua and Babua”.