UP civic body Result : “Rahul could not even win urban bodies poll Says Smriti Irani
LUCKNOW : The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh faces its biggest electoral test on Friday since coming to power earlier this year.
After the marathon three-phase polling that saw 652 local bodies go to the poll, the Election Commission will declare the result of Uttar Pradesh’s civic body election today. The final results are expected by this evening.
The ruling BJP in UP forged ahead of its rivals, leading in 14 of the 16 mayoral seats. Civic bodies polls were held in the State in three phases. In the remaining two places, the Bahujan Samaj Party was leading, according to trends from these seats in the first four hours of counting of votes for all the 652 urban local bodies that began at 8 am.
As per initial trends available, the BJP candidates were leading in seats in Lucknow, Allahabad, Aligarh, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Gorakhpur, Faizabad and Moradabad municipal corporations while the BSP was ahead in the Jhansi and Agra municipal corporations.
BJP had won the Amethi Nagar Panchayat Chairman post with 48% vote share. The BSP and SP forfeited their deposits. The civic polls are being seen as a referendum of Yogi Adityanath government’s performance in the past seven months. The BJP had won 10 out of 12 mayoral seats in 2012.
Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma when asked to comment on trends said the people of the state have shown full faith in the BJP and its ideology and discarded the SP, the BSP and the Congress.
“The SP, the BSP and the Congress contested the polls as each other’s relatives. (SP chief) Akhilesh Yadav and (Congress vice president) Rahul Gandhi, who were together during assembly polls as ‘UP ke ladke’ have become like the tyre and tube of a cycle and it has got punctured,” Mr. Sharma said. ’Cycle’ is the election symbol of the Samajwadi Party.
Union Textile Minister Smriti Irani attacks Rahul Gandhi over UP civic poll results, says “Rahul could not even win urban bodies poll, how can he claim to win Lok Sabha elections?
“Result proves public is not with Rahul Gandhi. People of Gujarat will reply to Rahul in the same manner Uttar Pradesh did,” says Irani These elections are being viewed as a litmus test for the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress as well.
The BSP, which has been on the sidelines of politics in the state ever since it lost power to SP in 2012 and lost two successive elections – 2014 general elections and the 2017 state assembly elections, contested the urban body polls for the first time on party symbol.
This is being seen as a desperate attempt by BSP supremo Mayawati to stay relevant in the state, which she has ruled four times.
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 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 comparatively low-key. Both SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati did not campaign for their candidates.
Meanwhile , Sanyukta Bhatia of the ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh is set to be the first woman mayor of Lucknow in 100 years. On November 5, the BJP had announced Sanyukta as its mayoral candidate for the city.
Gorakhpur: BJP candidate Ajay Rai won elections from ward no 69 . Gorakhpur, which is also known as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s constituency, has 70 wards and a population of 673,446. (With Agency Inputs ).
