UP local body polls: BJP wins mayor posts in 10 of the 17 municipal corporations

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party won the mayoral elections in 10 of the 17 municipal corporations in Uttar Pradesh, results for which were announced on Saturday, virtually adding a third engine to its "double-engine" government.

The party's candidates won in Ayodhya, Jhansi, Bareilly, Mathura-Vrindavan, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Prayagraj, Aligarh, Shahjahanpur and Ghaziabad.

Official results for the remaining seven municipal corporations -- Agra, Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerut, Firozabad, Varanasi and Gorakhpur -- are expected later on Saturday.

The urban local body polls were held in two phases -- on May 4 and May 11 -- to elect 17 mayors and 1,401 corporators. Nineteen corporators were elected unopposed, according to the State Election Commission.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath thanked people and congratulated BJP workers on the party's massive victory in the urban local body polls and for forming a "triple-engine government" in the state.

"Hearty congratulations to all the dedicated and hardworking workers of the BJP and the people of Uttar Pradesh, who love good governance, on the massive victory of the BJP in the Uttar Pradesh municipal elections," he said in a tweet in Hindi.

Adityanath had led the campaign for the urban local body polls, holding several election meetings across the state. During the campaign, he had repeatedly urged voters to add a third wheel or third engine to the "double-engine" government in Uttar Pradesh.

In the temple town of Ayodhya, BJP candidate Girish Pati Tripathi won the mayoral election, defeating his nearest rival Ashish of the Samajwadi Party by a margin of 35,638 votes.

Tripathi bagged 77,494 votes. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) candidate Rehan secured the third position pocketing 15,107 votes. BSP candidate Ram Murti got 12,852 votes and Pramila Rajput of the Congress 4,084 votes, according to the State Election Commission (SEC).

In Jhansi, the BJP's Bihari Lal Arya bagged 1,23,503 votes and defeated his nearest rival Arvind Kumar of the Congress by a margin of 83,587 votes.

The Bahujan Samaj Party candidate came third, while the Samajwadi Party secured the fourth position.

In Bareilly, Umesh Gautam of the BJP secured more than 1.67 lakh votes to defeat independent candidate Iqbal Singh Tomar by a margin of 56,343 votes.

The temple town of Mathura-Vrindavan also witnessed a saffron bloom with BJP candidate Vinod Kumar Agarwal bagging more than 1.45 lakh votes and defeating his nearest rival Raja Mohatsim Ahmed of the BSP by a gap of more than 1.10 lakh votes.

In Moradabad, the BJP's Vinod Agarwal (over 1.21 lakh votes) defeated Mohammad Rizwan of the Congress (over 1.17 lakh votes) by a margin of 3,642 votes.

In Saharanpur, Ajay Kumar of the BJP defeated Khadija Masood of the BSP by a margin of 8,031 votes.

In Prayagraj, Umesh Chandra Ganesh Kesarwani bagged more than 2.35 lakh votes and defeated Ajay Kumar Srivastava of the Samajwadi Party, who got over 1.06 lakh votes.

Aligarh, which was won by the BSP in the previous mayoral election, saw a saffron surge with the BJP's Prashant Singhal securing more than 1.93 lakh votes to defeat his nearest rival Zameer Ullah Khan of the SP by a margin of 60,902 votes.

Shahjahanpur, which voted for the first time to elect its mayor, witnessed BJP's Archana Verma clinching victory on the mayor's seat by bagging 80,762 votes and defeating Nikhat Iqbal of the Congress, who got 50,484 votes.

In Ghaziabad, the BJP's Sunita Dayal secured 3,50,905 votes to defeat Nisara Khan of the BSP, who got only 63,249 votes. 

Pushpa Rawat of the Congress came third (with 58,951 votes), while SP's Poonam Yadav came a distant fourth (with 57,608 votes).

Meerut and Aligarh had Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) mayors in 2017, while the BJP ruled the rest.

In the two-phase urban local body elections, voting was also held to elect 198 chairpersons and 5,260 members of nagar palika parishads, 542 chairpersons of nagar panchayats and 7,104 members of nagar panchayats.

In all, 162 public representatives were elected unopposed, while there were as many as 83,378 candidates in the poll fray for 14,522 posts.

In the urban local body elections, 53 per cent of voters exercised their franchise in the second phase covering 38 districts on May 11, while the voter turnout in the first phase on May 4 was 52 per cent covering 37 districts of the state.

According to the State Election Commission, 4.32 crore people were eligible to cast their votes in the urban local body polls. In 2017, the polls were held in three phases and the overall polling percentage was 53 per cent.