BJP wins five Mayor seats, Congress 1; SP leads in two places

Lucknow, Nov 7 (UNI) The BJP has won five Mayoral seats in Uttar Pradesh and taken comfortable lead in three other seats in the urban local bodies poll.

The ruling Samajwadi Party was leading by a slender margin in Allahabad and Moradabad Mayoral seats while the Congress candidate has won the Bareilly seat by a margin of over 66,000 votes and was leading by 13,000 votes in Jhansi.

The BJP has won the Agra, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Varanasi and Gorakhpur Mayoral seats and the party candidates are leading in Lucknow, Kanpur and Meerut seats.

In a swinging battle of ballots, SP candidates have now taken lead of 1000 votes in Allahabad and 700 votes in Moradabad after trailing in the initial rounds.

There are 12 Mayoral seat in the state.

In the 2,000 polls, the BJP was the main gainer as it wrested 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 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 poll. Except for the BSP, all major parties had contested the UP civic poll.

Of the results of 120 Nagar Palika Parishads chairman out of total 194 announced so far, 44 were won by the SP, while BJP won 19 seats and the independents got elected on 36 parishad seats. The candidates of other smaller parties also managed 14 seats. Congress has won 7 seats.

Of the total of 304 Nagar Panchayat election results announced so far, the highest 117 were cornered by Independents, followed by SP 81, BJP 52 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.

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