UP Urban Local Body polls: With 5 Nagar Palika Parishad seats and 75 councillors, AIMIM spells doom for Samajwadi Party

The AIMIM won the Nagar Palika Parishad seats in Sambhal (Asia Musheer), Sikandra Rao in the Hathras district (Mohammed Musheer), Ghatampur in the Kanpur district (Abdul Ahad), Kundarki Nagar Panchayat in Moradabad (Zeenat Mehndi). and the Thiria Nizawat Khan Nagar Panchayat in the state’s Bareilly district (Imran Khan).

“The Samajwadi Party, which had always been labelling the AIMIM as the BJP’s B team, is, in fact, playing the second fiddle to the lotus party. And it was because of the SP that our candidates could not defeat their BJP counterparts at a majority of seats in the Urban Local Body polls in the state,” said Mohammed Anas, the AIMIM mayoral candidate in Meerut.

With nearly 1.28 lakh votes, Anas was in second place in Meerut’s first citizen contest which was won by the BJP’s Harikant Ahluwalia with a margin of more than 1 lakh votes. This is for the first time that the BJP has managed to place its nominee at the top post in the municipal corporations after 11 years.

SP candidate Seema Pradhan was pushed to the third position with nearly 1.15 lakh votes because of heavy polling in favour of the AIMIM nominee by Muslims. Owaisi’s party has also won 11 councillors seats in Meerut.

In the Muzaffarnagar mayoral battle, the BJP’s Meenakshi Swarup has won and polled 91942 votes while the SP-BSP coalition candidate Lavli Sharma stood second with 80156 votes. The AIMIM’s nominee Choti Kumari in Muzaffarnagar managed to get 11531 votes.

The victory margin for the BJP candidate in Muzaffarnagar was 11786 votes which could have tilted the balance in favour of the SP nominee had the AIMIM not performed well, as per experts.

“In the previous ULB polls, the AIMIM could wrest only one seat of the chairman in Nagar Palika parishad and 32 councillors were elected but this time the party has not only improved its performance but also dealt a major blow to the SP. Our leadership should at least wake up from the slumber or else we are near political obliteration by the next general elections in Uttar Pradesh,” said a senior SP functionary in Meerut.

The voting for the ULB polls was held in two phases on May 4 and May 11 and the votes were counted on May 13.