BJP way ahead of others in mayor polls

Lucknow, Nov 7: The ruling Samajwadi Party received a drubbing in the Mayoral elections in Uttar Pradesh as it could win only one seat, while the BJP was the main gainer with five seats and the Congress candidates romped home in two places.

The BJP candidates at Kanpur, Meerut and Congress at Jhansi have taken comfortable leads in the Mayors poll while in Lucknow a close contest was on the cards between the BJP and the Congress nominees.

Presently, BJP candidate Dr Dinesh Sharma was leading by 5000 votes in Lucknow Mayor polls after seven rounds of counting.

The SP opened its account by winning the Moradabad Mayor seat when party candidate Tufel Hussain defeated BJP candidate Beena Agarwal by a slender margin of 1800 votes while in Allahabad, the Congress wrested the seat from SP.

Congress candidate and journalist by profession Supriya Aron has won the Bareilly seat by a huge margin of over 66,000 votes while in Allahabad party candidate Jitendra Nath Singh won by a margin of 3500 votes.

The BJP has won the Agra, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Varanasi and Gorakhpur Mayoral seats by comfortable margins In the 2000 polls, the BJP was the main gainer as it had six mayor seats out of the total 12, while the BSP, SP and Congress had won one seat each. Three independents were declared winners on mayoral posts in the last election.

Percentage wise, BJP stood on top by notching 18.11 per cent votes in the urban local bodies poll in the year 2000, while the SP received 15.30 per cent, BSP got 13.48 per cent and Congress could only manage 8.63 per cent votes.

Otherwise, independents along with the ruling Samajwadi Party candidates were cruising ahead of the BJP and the Congress in UP urban local bodies poll results declared so far.

The civic election is considered crucial as political parties see them as a warm-up exercise ahead of the assembly election due early next year.

Several independents were supported by the BSP, which did not contest the polls. Except for the BSP, all major parties had contested the UP civic poll.

Of the results of 127 Nagar Palika Parishads chairman, out of total 194 announced so far, 46 were won by the SP, while the BJP won 20 seats and the independents got elected on 38 Parishad seats. The candidates of other smaller parties also managed 15 seats. Congress has won 8 seats.

Of the total of 326 Nagar Panchayat election results announced so far, the highest 125 were cornered by Independents, followed by SP 89, BJP 58 and Congress 22. The other 32 seats were won by smaller parties like BS-4, RLD and Apna Dal. Elections were held for 417 Nagar panchayats in the state.

The three phase election -- on October 28, 31 and November 3 -- were marred by allegations of large scale rigging and sporadic violence, in which two persons died and over 100 were injured.

UNI