UP Municipal Polls: BJP Wins 7 Mayoral Posts

Maintaining its dominance in urban local bodies, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) today won seven of 12 Mayoral posts in municipal corporations in three-tier elections in Uttar Pradesh.

As vote-counting was in progress, the party led with a good margin in Varanasi, Kanpur and Ghaziabad whereas the state's ruling Samajwadi Party-backed candidate I S Tomar won the Mayoral election of Bareilly municipal corporation.

In the last municipal elections held in 2007, BJP had won eight seats, including Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Aligarh, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Ghaziabad and Meerut.

In Moradabad, BJP candidate Veena Agarwal defeated her nearest rival Humanu Kabir of Peace Party by a margin of 70,111, whereas its candidate Shakuntala Bharati defeated independent Razia Khan in Aligarh by a margin of 41,834 votes.

In Gorakhpur, BJP's Satya Pandey defeated Sujit Kareem of Congress by a margin of 33,156 votes.

In Jhansi, Kiran Raju Bookseller of BJP defeated Nirmala Bilharia of Congress by a margin of 25.669 votes while in Lucknjow, where BJP had performed poorly during the last assembly elections, party candidate Dinesh Sharma won the seat for the second consecutive time defeating Neeraj Bora of Congress by a margin of more than 1.10 lakh votes.

In Meerut, Harikant Ahluwalia of BJP defeated SP-backed Rajeeq Ansari by nearly 70,000 votes and in Agra party candidate Indrajeet Arya defeated BSP-backed Kartar Singh Bhartiya by a margin of 12,064 votes.

While Congress and BJP contested elections on party symbols, BSP and SP allowed their workers to contest polls but not on party symbols.

SP and BSP are not directly taking part in the civic bodies poll this time.

Congress, which had won three seats of Mayor in Jhansi, Allahabad and Bareilly in the last municipal elections, has so far failed to open its account.

State Election Commissioner S K Agarwal said elections were held for 12 municipal corporations, 186 Nagar Palika Parishads and 388 Nagar Panchayats.

He said that of the 10,604 posts of corporators in corporations, parishad and panchayat, so far result of 917 have been announced, of which BJP won 130, Congress 58 and independents 729.

SP-supported candidate Azhar Khan was elected Chairman of Rampur Municipal Board after defeating BJP and Congress nominees with a margin of over 25,000 votes.

BJP dominated the Nagar Palikas (City Boards) seats of both Ayodhya and Faizabad. Party contestant Radhey Shyam Gupta defeated Congress candidate to win the chairmanship of Ayodhya Nagar Palika.

BJP candidate Vijay Gupta won the election for Faizabad Nagar Palika Chairman. In 2002, Gupta had won the seat as the Congress candidate.

Dadri Nagar Pallika chairman seat was won by BJP candidate Geeta Pandit.