New Delhi: The Yogi Adityanath government romped to victory in the Uttar Pradesh civic polls by winning 14 seats. The BSP was a distant second with two seats.
BJP's mayor candidates have won in Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Agra, Allahabad, Lucknow, Firozabad, Ayodhya, Mathura, Saharanpur and Moradabad. The BSP has won in Aligarh and Meerut. BJP nominees are ahead in Jhansi and Bareilly.
In a major embarrassment for the Congress, the BJP has won the Amethi Nagar Panchayat elections. Amethi is the constituency of Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi and is considered a bastion of the party.
Mayawati-led BSP sprang a surprise as it thwarted the challenge from BJP candidates to win the mayoral posts in western UP's Aligarh and Meerut towns. Akhilesh Yadav-led SP failed to win a single mayoral seat.
Lucknow elected its first woman mayor with BJP's Sanyukta Bhatia winning the election. Prestigious seats like Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, temple town Ayodhya and Adityanath's home turf Gorakhpur were all won by the BJP. BJP also scored impressive victories in Kanpur and Ghaziabad with its nominees emerging victors by a margin of over a lakh votes. It was BJP all the way in Allahabad and Agra also.
Counting of ballots polled in three phases on November 22, 26 and 29 was on under tight security cover and CCTV surveillance at 334 centres at district and tehsil headquarters, the state election commission said.
Central paramilitary forces were deployed around the counting centres. Arrangements were also been made for web casting of the counting process.
Official sources said no procession were allowed during the counting process and following the announcement of the results.
The elections, coming eight months after the BJP's landslide victory in the UP Assembly elections, are being seen as the first popularity test for the Yogi Adityanath government.
Polling was held for 16 nagar nigams, 198 nagar palika parishads and 438 nagar panchayats with an average turnout of all the three phases estimated at 52.5 per cent of the 3.32 crore voters.
The Yogi Adityanath government, soon after assuming office in March, had constituted two municipal corporations of Ayodhya and Vrindavan-Mathura.
The overall percentage recorded an improvement from 46.2 per cent in 2012 to 52.5 per cent this time.
The elections have generated a lot of political heat with the ruling BJP leaving nothing to chance. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath criss-crossed the state to woo voters in the name of development.
Aware that the BJP's performance in the polls was being watched closely after its massive sweep of the state in the Assembly polls this year, Adityanath undertook a whirlwind campaign, unprecedented for a chief minister, during civic polls.
Opposition SP, BSP and Congress campaigns were on comparatively low key. Both SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati did not campaign for their candidates.
For the very first time, web-casting of 10% booths of every district was done in an attempt to monitor booth-level activity. Drones were also used at some sensitive and hyper-sensitive polling booths.
These elections have become more interesting because the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) decided to contest the elections on their own symbol. The Congress also tried its best to put up a good performance.
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