Mayoral poll results:BJP keeps tag of 'urban party' intact

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

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

Congress, hardly considered a potent force in UP, is also likely to get Jhansi mayor seat under its belt.

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

The SP had 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.

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.

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.

Of the 133 Nagar Palika Parishads chairman results announced so far, 47 were won by the SP, while BJP won 21 seats and the independents got elected on 41 seats.

The candidates of other smaller parties also managed 15 seats.

Congress has won 9 seats.

Of the total 351 nagar panchayat election results announced so far, the highest 140 were cornered by Independents, followed by SP 93, BJP 63 and Congress 23. The other 32 seats are won by smaller parties like BS-4, RLD and Apna Dal. Election was held for 417 nagar panchayats in UP.

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

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