UP Municipal Election Results 2023: As counting for the Uttar Pradesh civic body polls is underway, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to be moving towards a landslide victory in the state. At the time of writing this report, the BJP was leading on 16 out of 17 mayoral seats, while the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was ahead on 1 seat. Meanwhile, the early trends seem to be no less than a nightmare for the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress as they are nowhere in the race for mayoral seats.
Given its larger political acceptance in the urban areas, the saffron party fancies its chances of sweeping the mayoral seats in the state. As per the early trends, the BJP was ahead on 16 seats, while the BSP was leading on Saharanpur municipal seat. The saffron party was leading on crucial mayoral seats like Lucknow, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Prayagraj, Ghaziabad, Ayodhya, Aligarh, etc. Although this is the early trend, the scenario might change on a few seats when the final result comes.
In 2017 civic polls, the BJP had won 14 out of 16 mayoral seats, while two seats, Meerut and Aligarh went to BSP.
Litmus test for parties ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha polls
During the high-octane campaigning, the main rivals BJP and Samajwadi Party leaders criss-crossed the poll-bound areas to gain an upper hand in the municipalities ahead of the crucial Parliamentary elections next year. The election holds importance as political parties left no stone unturned to showcase their strength before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state, which sends the maximum of 80 MPs to Lok Sabha. In the run-up to the civic polls, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath addressed as many as 50 public meetings in 13 days in an attempt to maintain political dominance in the state.
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UP urban local body polls 2023
The elections to 17 municipal corporations, 199 nagar palika parishads and 544 nagar panchayats were held in two phases on May 4 and 11. The overall voting percentage in the first phase was recorded at 52%, while it was 53% in the second phase. The polling was held with both EVMs and ballot papers for a total of 14,684 posts.
As per the Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission, these included 17 posts of mayor, 1,420 of corporators, 199 of nagar palika parishad chairpersons, 5,327 of nagar palika parishad members, 544 of nagar panchayat chairpersons and 7,178 posts of nagar panchayat members.
(With inputs from agencies)
