Though ruling BJP scored comprehensive victory in the first phase of urban local body polls, defeat of mayoral candidates in two municipal corporations and decisive trails in two other corporations in metro cities dented the party’s performance. Besides, two of BJP’s mayoral candidates posted extremely thin victory margins.
Results were in process of being announced till late Sunday evening. In the first phase, polls were held for 11 municipal corporations, 36 municipalities and 86 municipal councils. While the mayoral elections were held directly, the chairpersons of the municipalities and municipal councils will be elected among respective winning councilors later this month. The results of the second phase are scheduled on July 20.
One of the most interesting results came from Singrauli on the East UP border. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) party made a direct entry into the mayoral league here with its candidate Rani Agrawal posting a comprehensive victory with a margin of 9,352 votes over the BJP and the Congress candidates who polled almost equal votes. AAP also won 11 seats of councilors in different local bodies of state and about 10 in Singrauli Municipal Corporation, as per available information.
BJP candidates won in majority of the urban local body wards and the saffron party looked poised to rule 10 (of 11) corporations, 31 (of 36) municipalities and 67 (of 86) councils, as per details of results available from sources till filing of this report. However, the defeats on prestigious mayor seats clouded the comprehensive victory.
The loss of mayoral posts is a shock for BJP especially because in the previous elections (2014-15), the saffron party had won all 16 mayor seats. Interestingly, the party was trailing in metro seats like Gwalior – a stronghold of Union ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia and Narendra Tomar where Congress never won in past 57 years and in Jabalpu, where both BJP national president J.P. Nadda and state president Vishnu Dutt Sharma have marital links, and the Congress did not win in past 23 years.
These mixed results of the local bodies’ polls that are being looked upon as semi-final before 2023 assembly polls, seem to be a moral push for the Congress that lost its government despite winning more seats in 2018 assembly and a wake-up call to the BJP, which fought the elections with all its might, with CM Chouhan conducting whirlwind election campaign across state.
At the time of writing this report, BJP had won five posts of mayor at Burhanpur, Ujjain, Khandwa, Sagar and Satna. The ruling party’s candidates were leading decisively in the big cities of Bhopal and Indore. Of these, the wins in Burhanpur and Ujjain were wafer thin – of 542 votes and 923 votes respectively. In Burhanpur, AIMIM candidate polled 10,274 votes. More votes than winning margin went to NOTA at 677.
The Congress won mayoral post in Chhindwara, the stronghold of former chief minister and MP Congress chief Kamal Nath, and the party was leading in Gwalior and Jabalpur. However, two MLAs of Congress – Siddharth Kushwaha in Satna and Mahesh Parmar in Ujjain lost and another – Sanjay Shukla in Indore was trailing behind BJP’s Pushyamitra Bhargava by a big margin of over 1.20 lakh votes.
BJP, Congress in celebratory mood
Both BJP and Congress were in a celebratory mood on Sunday evening. The BJP tom-tommed the overall comprehensive wins in the urban local bodies. MP BJP chief Vishnu Dutt Sharma attributed it to the hard work of the BJP cadre at all levels and the pro-people outlook of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The CM reached the party headquarters on Sunday evening and announced details of the results and also offered sweets to Bhopal mayoral candidate Malti Rai, who has taken a decisive lead.
The Congress highlighted that it had made major inroads by winning/leading in three mayoral seats and losing two by very thin margins. They attributed loss in Ujjain to foul play by BJP and that in Burhanpur to AIMIM factor, which the party reiterated, worked like the ‘B’ team of BJP. The Congress also claimed a big reduction in the winning margins of BJP in several seats and a big upswing in the vote percentage of Congress.
Kamal Nath tweeted to congratulate all the winners from the party – especially the mayoral winners/leading candidates from Gwalior, Jabalpur and Chhindwara and expressed gratitude to the voters who supported the party and attributed win to the hard work of Congress cadre. “We won’t ever let people’s faith break. We respect the mandate and would review the results. BJP contested the polls through misuse of police, money and administration, yet we got immense support from the people,” Nath said.
Results of mayor elections
Burhanpur – Madhuri Patel (BJP) defeated Shahnaz Ansari (Congress) by 542 votes
Ujjain – Mukesh Tatwal (BJP) defeated Mahesh Parmar (Congress) by 923 votes
Singrauli – Rani Agrawal (AAP) defeated Chandraprakash Vishwakarma by 9352 votes
Satna – Yogesh Tamrakar (BJP) defeated Siddharth Kushwaha (Congress) by 24,916 votes
Khandwa – Amrita Yadav (BJP) defeated Asha Mishra (Congress) by 19675 votes
Sagar – Sangeeta Tiwari (BJP) defeated Nidhi Jain (Congress) by 12665 votes
Chhindwara – Vikram Ahake (Congress) defeated Anant Dhurve (BJP) by 3547 votes
Leads
Bhopal – Malti Rai (BJP) leading over Vibha Patel (Congress) by 83,000-odd votes
Indore – Pushyamitra Bhargava (BJP) leading over Sanjay Shukla (Congress) by 1.20 lakh-odd votes
Gwalior – Shobha Sikarwar (Congress) leading over Suman Sharma (BJP) by 23,000-odd votes
Jabalpur – Jagar Bahadur Singh (Congress) leading over Dr. Jitendra Jamdar by 44,000-odd votes