UP Panchayat polls: BJP won 66, SP 5 seats and Congress zero

In Uttar Pradesh, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged victorious in the zila panchayat chairpersons’ polls on Saturday with candidates backed by the party winning 66 of the 75 seats. The party won 21 of these seats unopposed after the Opposition candidates in many cases joined the ruling BJP overnight and withdrew from the contest. Only the SP and its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) put up any resistance from the Opposition ranks. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) boycotted the elections, citing misuse of official machinery while the Congress lost the only seat it contested in Rae Bareli.

The districts where zila panchayat chairpersons won unopposed are Saharanpur, Bahraich, Etawah, Chitrakoot, Agra, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Amroha, Moradabad, Lalitpur, Jhansi, Banda, Shravasti, Balrampur, Gonda, Gorakhpur, Mau, Varanasi, Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur. BJP won in Ayodhya, Mathura, Lucknow, Prayagraj, Mainpuri, Hapur, Auraiya, Barabanki, Kanpur, Kushinagar, Kaushambhi, Raibareli, and Siddharthnagar, among others. Surprisingly, the BJP also emerged victorious in the districts of Muzaffarnagar, Rampur, Bijnor, Shamli, and Amethi.

The SP managed to wrest five seats out of the 75 up for grabs: Etah, Sant Kabir Nagar, Azamgarh and Baliya. A Lok Dal candidate won the Baghpat seat; Pratapgarh went to the Jansatta Dal, while an independent candidate won from Jaunpur. The BSP was not in the fray after party chief Mayawati decided to stay away from the zila panchayat chairperson polls.Elections for district panchayat chiefs were not held on a party basis but candidates enjoy the tacit support of various parties. Chairpersons of 22 district panchayats of the state were elected unopposed on June 29; of these seats, 21 went to the BJP, while the Samajwadi Party bagged one.