Yogi hails ‘massive win’ as BJP gets 17/17 mayoral seats in UP municipal polls, SP & BSP draw blanks

Counting of votes for the Uttar Pradesh Municipal elections underway, in Prayagraj on Saturday | ANI

Lucknow: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was on its way to emerge triumphant Saturday in the Uttar Pradesh municipal polls, leading in all the 17 mayoral seats in the state. The polls were held in two phases on 4 May and 11 May respectively.

The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) were on their way to draw a blank.

Elections were also held for 1,420 corporators, 199 nagar palika parishad chairpersons, 5,327 nagar palika parishad members, and 7,178 nagar panchayat members.

By 6.30pm, the state election commission had released the data of 73 of the 199 Nagar Palika chairperson seats. Out of these, the BJP won 35 while 12 went to the SP. The Rashtriya Lok Dal secured three while the Congress won two seats. Independent candidates were victorious on 14. The BSP managed to win five seats.

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) of Asaduddin Owaisi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)  too opened their accounts and won one seat of each.

Till 8 pm, out of the total 544 seats of nagar panchayat chairpersons, the state election commission declared the results on 452 seats. Out of these, the BJP won as many as 168 seats of chairpersons of the nagar panchayats while the SP won 55 seats. 

The BSP won 32 seats. Further, Congress won 11 seats, RLD won nine seats, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party won two seats. The AAP won five seats while the AIMIM won two seats. Chandra Shekhar’s Azad Samaj Party won two seats while the All India Forward Block won one seat. 

The results for corporators, Nagar Palika Parishad members, and Nagar Panchayat members were still coming in at the time of filing of this report and will take longer since the elections involved a larger number of candidates.

In the 2017 municipal polls, the BJP had won 101 seats of nagar panchayat chairpersons while the SP had bagged 83 seats. The BSP had won 45 seats of nagar panchayat chairpersons while 181 independents had emerged as winners.

In 2017, the BJP had won 101 nagar panchayat chairpersons’ seats, while the SP bagged 83. The BSP had won 45 seats, while 181 Independents emerged winners.

Shahjahanpur will get its first mayor as the city became a municipal corporation in 2018.

The 2017 contest was for 16 mayoral seats of which the BJP had won 14. This time BJP was ahead on all 17, with party’s Archana Verma ahead of the SP candidate on the newly created Shahjahanpur mayor post. 

Out of the BJP’s mayoral candidates, 14 were new while the party had placed bets on the outgoing mayors in Kanpur, Bareilly and Moradabad.

This election saw Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath drive the BJP’s high-pitched election campaign marked with references to ‘mafiaraj (mafia rule)‘, ‘goondaraj (criminal rule)’, ‘danga (riot)’, ‘tamancha (pistol)’, ‘airport’, ‘vikas (progress)’, among others.

The CM addressed as many as 50 rallies during the campaign in the two phases of the polls held on 4 and 11 May.

Reacting to the party’s performance, CM Yogi Adityanath addressed a press conference where he gave the credit to the public, terming it the BJP’s biggest win so far.

He also mentioned ally Apna Dal (S) and said the party has registered a win in Chhanbey and Suar bypolls with a huge mandate.

Earlier, the CM had tweeted, “This massive win reflects the public’s trust in the guidance of PM Narendra Modi and the pro-people, pro-development and the inclusive policies of the double engine government,” as he thanked the “dedicated workers and diligent workers of the UP BJP and development-loving public of Uttar Pradesh”.

Celebrations started at the BJP office around 4 pm Saturday where jubilant workers distributed sweets and the CM, along with the two deputy CMs, Keshav Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, are set to address workers.

Deputy CM Keshav Maurya commented that the SP’s sun had set and the SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had gone silent. “We will try to win 80 on 80 seats in Lok Sabha elections,” he told mediapersons.

AAP won 11 seats in Rampur’s Kemri nagar panchayat, from where the party also won the nagar panchayat chairperson post. The party also bagged four seats of the Shahbad nagar panchayat in Shahbad and two councillors’ posts in the Rampur municipal council. It also won the post of the chairman of the Rampur municipal council. An AAP councillor also won as a member of the Suar municipal council.

BSP loses its mayor seats, SP draws blank again

The BSP, which had won two mayor seats in 2017, was on its way to draw a blank in the mayor polls — signalling the declining strength of the party which has given a chief minister to the most populous state of the country four times.

Experts have been sounding alarm bells for the party’s future ever since the 2017 assembly elections when it won a single assembly seat.

BJP candidates Prashant Singhal and Hemlata Diwakar were leading the fight for Aligarh and Meerut mayoral seats respectively, which were held by the BSP.

The SP’s hopes were dashed once again even as party chief Akhilesh Yadav demanded that the Election Commission probes the fraud allegations in the Gorakhpur mayor election where party candidate Kajal Nishad alleged that while the total votes polled on 4 May were 3,83,000, the number of votes counted Saturday were over 5 lakh.

Yadav tweeted Saturday about the Karnataka election results where the Congress is headed to a full majority but refrained from making any statement on the UP polls except the allegation of fraud in Gorakhpur mayor election.

“Election Commission should take note of the reports of fraud in Gorakhpur where more votes have been counted than polled. The Commission should probe the truth about the counting and go for recounting if the process is found faulty,” he tweeted.

BJP’s Manglesh Srivastava was on his way to win the mayor seat with a huge margin of over 60,000 votes in Gorakhpur.

The SP had failed to win a single seat in the previous mayoral elections too.

(Edited by Richa Mishra)