Lucknow: The ruling BJP 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 -- was 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.
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.