Amid Karnataka Gloom, UP Gives BJP Reasons To Cheer, Wins All 17 Mayor Seats

Lucknow, May 13 (TNA) On a day the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Congress in its lone South citadel Karanataka, Uttar Pradesh gave reasons to the the saffron camp to cheer amidst gloom. And this as not only did its ally - Apna Dal, won both the assembly bypolls, the party’s mayoral candidates won in all the 17 Municipal Corporations.

The victory was also sweet as not only did the BJP retain its held mayor seats but also snatched Aligarh and Meerut from its opponents to make it a clean sweep in the urban body elections. The maiden elections in the newly made Shahjahanpur Nagar Nigam, party’s Archana Verma emerged victorious to be the first citizen. BJP had placed its bet on its incumbent mayors only in Kanpur, Bareilly and Moradabad and all the three won the elections.

from Kanpur incumbent mayor Pramila Pandey won while from Moradabad Vinod Agarwal and from Bareilly Umesh Gautam won a second consecutive term for the BJP. Harikant Ahluwalia who had earlier been mayor of Meerut has also won. BJP’s Bihari Lal Arya won with the maxium votes in Jhansi with a victory margin of 123503 votes.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had criss-crossed the entire state for thes crucial civic body polls and had addressed more than 50 rallies. In the first phase he addressed 28 rallies and in the second he held 22 rallies.

BJP mayoral candidates who have include Sushma Kharkwal (Lucknow), Dr Manglesh Srivastava (Gorakhpur), Prashant Singhal (Aligarh), Ashok Tiwari (Varanasi), Ganesh Chandra Umesh Kesharwani from Prayagraj, Girish Pati Tripathi from Ayodhya, Vinod Agarwal from Mathura-Vrindavan, Sunita Dayal from Ghaziabad, Kamini Rathore from Firozabad and Hemlata Diwakar from Agra.