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THE BJP won all 17 mayoral seats and also secured most of the seats of chairpersons in nagar palika parishads and nagar panchayats in the urban local body polls, the results of which were declared on Saturday. By 6 pm, the BJP candidates were declared winners on 10 mayor seats: Ayodhya, Jhansi, Ghaziabad, Bareilly, Mathura-Vrindavan, Moradabad, Shahjhanpur, Prayagraj, Aligarh and Saharanpur. The party was leading on the seven mayor seats as well, with the BJP claiming that its candidates have won there too.
In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, BJP mayoral candidate Ashok Tiwari was leading, having secured 1.58 lakh votes while the SP’s Om Prakash Singh was trailing by 85,272 votes after the end of 14 rounds of counting by 6 pm. In Lucknow, the BJP’s Sushma Kharakwal was leading by a margin of 1.83 lakh votes after 20 rounds of counting. SP’s Vandana Mishra was trailing, at second position.
In the municipal corporations, as of 6 pm, the BJP had won 760 seats of corporators. Among other local bodies, the BJP had won 24 seats of chairpersons in Nagar Palika Parishad with 741 ward members, and 92 seats of chairpersons in Nagar Panchayats with 936 ward members by 6 pm when the counting of voters in a large number of constituencies was in progress.
With that win, the BJP is on track to improve its performance in comparison with 2017 when it won 14 mayor seats, 596 corporatpors seats in the municipal corporations, 923 nagar palika members and 664 nagar panchayat members.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath with his Cabinet colleagues joined the BJP’s celebrations at the party state headquarters, where they exchanged bouquets and distributed sweets. In his address, Adityanath attributed the win to the “hard work of BJP workers and good coordination between the party and the government.” Adityanath added that the people have given mandate to the atmosphere of “good governance, development and security” that was developed by the double engine government under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
On Saturday evening, the CM added that in the final tally, the BJP would (in total) win more than double the seats it did in the 2017 urban local body polls.
The BSP, which won two mayor seats (Meerut and Aligarh) in 2017, could not win a single mayor seat this time. Party president Mayawati’s strategy of social engineering involving Muslims and Dalits failed, as the party could not win any mayor seat despite fielding 11 Muslim candidates. The party won 81 seats of corporators in nagar nigams.
Mayawati’s BSP has won three seats of chairpersons and 105 members in Nagar Palika Parishads. In Nagar Panchayats, party won 11 seats of chairpersons and 130 members.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) drew a blank in the mayoral elections, as it had done in 2017 too. By 6 pm, the party had won 177 seats of corporators in municipal corporations. In nagar palika parishads, the SP won nine seats of chairpersons and 226 members. In Nagar Panchayats, the party has won 34 seats of chairpersons and 319 members.
The Congress won only 69 seats of municipal corporators in nagar nigams, one seat of nagar palika chairperson with 61 members and five seats of nagar panchayat chairpersons with 510 members.
Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) won two seats of nagar palika chairpersons and three seats of nagar panchayat chairpersons.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has won one seat of nagar palika chairperson and three seats of nagar panchayat chairpersons.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav did not immediately react to the poll results but demanded a probe in Gorakhpur where he alleged that the number of votes counted was “more polled votes polled. Till 6 pm on Saturday, BSP chief Mayawati, too, was yet to comment on the poll results.
