Mayoral poll results: BJP returns as 'urban party' in UP

Lucknow, Nov 7 (UNI) The BJP today emerged as a major winner in Uttar Pradesh mayoral poll, winning seven out of 12 seats and set to bag one rpt one more.

The latest good news for BJP came from Kanpur, where its candidate Ravindra Patni emerged winner by a margin of over 50,000 votes.

The ruling Samajwadi Party had a disappointing outing in urban local bodies poll as far as mayoral seats are concerned, as it could win only one seat, while the Congress bagged two.

Congress, hardly considered a potent force in UP, is also likely to get Jhansi mayor seat under its belt. The last round of counting was on in Jhansi and the final results were expected later tonight.

The BJP has won the Kanpur, Agra, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Meerut mayoral seats by comfortable margins, while the Congress is home in Allahabad and Bareilly.

The SP bagged the lone seat in Moradabad, where party candidate Tufel Hussain defeated BJP candidate Beena Agarwal by a slender margin of 1,800 votes.

BSP chose to stay away from civic poll in a way giving an advantage to BJP and Congress.

In Lucknow, BJP candidate Dinesh Sharma was leading by 7,000 votes till reports last came in. Counting in one of the centres was suspended temporarily and was likely to be resumed after a couple of hours.

Congress candidate and professional journalist Supriya Airon 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.

Ravindra Patni (Kanpur) Madhu Gujjar (Meerut), Damyanti Goel (Ghaziabad), Ashutosh Varshney (Aligarh), Anjula singh Mahaur (Agra), Anju Chaudhry (Gorakhpur) and Kaushlendra Singh (Varanasi) are the other elected mayors.

The BJP had six seats to its credit in 2000, followed by three independents and one each by BSP, SP and Congress.

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.

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.

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