The candidates of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-Jannayak Janata Party (BJP-JJP) won a majority of seats in the poll results declared on Wednesday for Haryana’s 46 municipal bodies.

The BJP-JJP alliance jointly won a total of 25 of the 46 seats. Buoyed by these results, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the protest against the Agnipath scheme had no effect on the election results. 

The civic polls were held at a time when the state had seen violence in the midst of demonstrations against Agnipath, the Centre’s new military recruitment scheme. Khattar dedicated this victory to the hardworking workers of the party.

The polls were held on Sunday for the 18 municipal councils and 28 municipal committees in the state. The BJP has won 22 of these seats, while its ally JJP has won three. Apart from this, independent candidates have won 19 seats. Aam Aadmi Party and Indian National Lok Dal have got success in one seat each.

The ruling BJP, however, suffered a setback in the CM’s home turf with the saffron party winning just one of the four municipal committee president posts in Karnal district, losing the other three seats to independent candidates.

As per the seat-sharing arrangement was reached between the BJP-JJP, the combine contested the municipal council president’s polls on party symbols. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) had also fielded their candidates on party symbols. The Congress, however, didn’t contest the civic body polls on party symbol.

Former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda said although the Congress party stayed away from this election, local party leaders had extended their support to the independent candidate in their respective areas. “Independent candidates have won about 19 seats out of 46 municipal and municipal council seats and finished second in 30 places in close contests,” he said adding independent candidates secured double the votes, 52.2 percent votes against the BJPs’ 26.3 percent votes in the cities.

Hooda said the BJP-JJP alliance has completely failed to win the trust of the people. “The victory of a large number of independent candidates and the vote share they got shows that the people are deeply angry with the performance of the current government and the public have made their displeasure clear through the vote. Now the people of Haryana are eagerly waiting for the assembly and Lok Sabha elections so that the BJP-JJP government can be taught a lesson by the power of their vote,” he added.