PrashantNews
The ruling BJP on Sunday celebrated its big victory in the urbal local bodies (ULBs) elections in Uttarakhand with Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami saying it was a trailer of the ruling party’s 2027 assembly election triumph also.
The BJP winning candidates took out victory processions, distributed sweets and burst crackers in the state as the results started trickling in after the counting of votes began on Saturday morning.
The BJP performed brilliantly in the elections winning 10 out of 11 mayor posts in the state and maintaining its dominance in municipal councils and nagar panchayats, top officials said.
The main opposition Congress party’s performance remained miserable as it failed to win any mayor seat with one seat going to an independent.
Top officials said the counting of votes remained erratic due to the use of ballot papers in the elections. “Since EVMs were not used, the counting of ballot papers is a tardy process,” a top official admitted. The voting for the 100 municipal bodies in the state was held on January 23. Elections were held through ballot papers for 11 municipal corporations, 43 municipalities and 46 nagar panchayats in Uttarakhand, in which 65.4 percent of the voters exercised their franchise.
A total of 5,405 candidates tried their luck for various posts in the election, including 72 candidates for the post of mayor.
BJP won the mayoral post in Dehradun, Rishikesh, Kashipur, Haridwar, Roorkee, Kotdwar, Rudrapur, Almora, Pithoragarh and Haldwani, while the only mayor seat that went to an independent candidate was Srinagar in Pauri district.
Saurabh Thapliyal in Dehradun, Shambhu Paswan in Rishikesh, Deepak Bali in Kashipur, Kiran Jaiswal in Haridwar, Anita Devi in Roorkee, Shailendra Rawat in Kotdwar, Vikas Sharma in Rudrapur, Ajay Verma in Almora, Kalpana Devlal in Pithoragarh and Gajraj Bisht in Haldwani won the mayoral post on BJP ticket. Independent candidate Aarti Bhandari won the mayoral post in Srinagar.
During the campaign for the municipal elections, BJP had asked the public to vote for the ‘triple engine’ government to maintain the uninterrupted pace of development in the state.
Dhami visited the state party headquarters in Dehradun and congratulated the candidates who won the elections and asked them to speed up the development works in their areas.
He said, ‘Hearty congratulations to all the candidates who won the civic elections. The public has played an important role in the development of the state by selecting capable public representatives with their blessings. Now it is the job of all the elected public representatives to speed up development in their respective areas and play their role in strengthening the systems.’
The Chief Minister said, ‘Our goal is to bring the concept of clean and green city to the ground through municipal bodies so that tourists coming from the country and abroad take positive and inspiring experiences with them.’
He also thanked the State Election Commission for conducting the municipal election process peacefully and successfully.
State BJP President Mahendra Bhatt said that the result of the municipal elections is another seal of the public on the policies and programs of the BJP governments at the Center and the state. He said, ‘These results are the trailer of BJP’s third consecutive victory in the state assembly elections to be held in 2027.’
Congress, which had won two mayor seats in the last municipal elections in 2018, could not win a single seat this time. In municipalities too, Congress could only secure the third position, behind BJP and independents.