Major gains for BJP in UP urban body polls

BJP candidate Dinesh Sharma (left) along with party's UP chief Laxmi Kant Bajpai showing the victory sign after winning the municipal corporation election for the second consecutive term, in Lucknow, on Saturday. Photo: PTI

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today won seven of 12 mayoral posts in municipal corporations in the three-tier elections in Uttar Pradesh.

As vote-counting was in progress, the party led with a good margin in Varanasi, Kanpur and Ghaziabad whereas the State’s ruling Samajwadi Party-backed candidate I S Tomar won the Mayoral election of Bareilly municipal corporation.

In the last municipal elections held in 2007, BJP had won eight seats, including Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Aligarh, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Ghaziabad and Meerut.

In Moradabad, BJP candidate Veena Agarwal defeated her nearest rival Humanu Kabir of Peace Party by a margin of 70,111, whereas its candidate Shakuntala Bharati defeated independent Razia Khan in Aligarh by a margin of 41,834 votes.

In Gorakhpur, BJP’s Satya Pandey defeated Sujit Kareem of Congress by a margin of 33,156 votes.

In Jhansi, Kiran Raju of BJP defeated Nirmala Bilharia of Congress by a margin of 25.669 votes while in Lucknow, where BJP had performed poorly during the last Assembly elections, party candidate Dinesh Sharma won the seat for the second consecutive time defeating Neeraj Bora of Congress by a margin of more than 1.10 lakh votes.