Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s appeal to the masses to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s mayoral candidates and elect a BJP board in municipal corporations was well-received by the people of Uttar Pradesh, who have ensured that opposition parties were kept out completely from some of the boards while all the 17 mayors were from the party.
For example, in Jhansi and the newly created Shahjahanpur Municipal Corporation, not a single Samajwadi Party councillor has won, whereas, for the first time, BJP would form boards on its own in 13 municipal corporations. The Samajwadi Party (SP) was reduced to zero seats in both Jhansi and Shahjahanpur Municipal Corporations while people preferred independent candidates to that of SP, BSP and the Congress on many seats. It is noteworthy that BSP councillor candidates drew a blank in Kanpur, Varanasi and Bareilly while Congress candidates could not even open their accounts in Ayodhya and Saharanpur.
The BJP councillors constitute over 50% of the board in 13 of 17 municipal corporations in the state. The party won 80 and 63 councillor seats out of 110 seats each in Lucknow and Kanpur respectively. The BJP candidates also bagged 63, 66, 56 and 58 seats out of 100 seats each in Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Prayagraj and Agra respectively. Besides, the party won 42 and 51 councillor seats out of 80 seats each in Gorakhpur and Bareilly respectively. The victory of the BJP marks the victory of CM Yogi’s faith in his mission of development.
The number of Samajwadi Party councillors remained zero in Jhansi and the newly created Shahjahanpur Municipal Corporation of Bundelkhand against BJP’s 38 and 41 out of 60 seats each.