Ayodhya elected its first ever mayor, with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rishikesh Upadhyay edging past the Samajwadi Party’s Gulshan Bindu by 3,600 votes. The seat was among 14 of the 16 municipal corporations the BJP won.
However, the party’s performance at the local level in Faizabad district, where Ayodhya is located, emerged as a sign of worry. Not only does Ayodhya hold political importance for the BJP’s Hindutva agenda, it was also the centre point of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s poll campaign.
The Samajwadi Party defeated the BJP to win all three Nagar Panchayat chairman seats in Faizabad (Gosaiganj, Bhadarsa and Bikapur). The BJP also lost badly to the SP on the post of Rudauli Nagar Palika Parishad chairman. The SP’s Jabbar Ali defeated the BJP’s Ashok Kumar, securing a convincing 60 % vote.
The SP also got more Nagar Palika Parishad members in Rudauli than the BJP — 10 against seven. The SP’s best performance was in Bhadarsa, where it won all the 11 Nagar Panchayat member seats, while in Gosaiganj it won five against the BJP’s one and three in Bikapur, where the BJP failed to open its account. In the Nandrauli seat in Bikapur, the BJP candidate was fourth, beaten even by the CPI, which stood second.
Even in the municipal corporation ward election, the BJP’s win was not overwhelming. Out of 60 wards, the party won 30 seats but the SP had a respectable second position with 18 seats. Ward 18, which is near the disputed Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi site, was won by the SP.
In Gorakhpur, the home turf of Mr. Adityanath, the BJP won the Gorakhpur mayor election by a huge margin of 75,972 votes. However, it could win only 27 out of 70 municipal corporation wards, with the SP breathing down its neck with 18 wins. The BJP was embarrassed as it lost from ward-68 Old Gorakhpur seat where Mr. Adityanath cast his vote.
