Uttarakhand: BJP sweeps urban local body polls, wins 10 mayoral seats

The BJP on Sunday swept the urban local body elections in Uttarakhand, winning 10 out of 11 mayoral seats to emerge as the dominant party in the municipal councils and nagar panchayats. While the BJP won 10 mayoral seats, an Independent candidate bagged the remaining seat, State Election Commissioner Sushil Kumar informed the media. However, the counting which began on Saturday is still underway and the results of all the 100 urban local bodies which went to the polls on January 23 are likely to be out by late afternoon, Kumar said.
Polling to 11 municipal corporations, 43 municipal councils, and 46 nagar panchayats was held by ballot on Thursday with 65.4 per cent of voters exercising their franchise.A total of 5,405 candidates, including 72 running for 11 mayoral posts, 445 for municipal council chairperson and 4,888 for municipal councillors and members, were in the fray.
The mayoral seats won by the BJP included Dehradun (Saurabh Thapliyal), Rishikesh (Shambhu Paswan), Kashipur (Dipak Bali), Haridwar (Kiran Jaisdal), Roorkee (Anita Devi), Kotdwar (Shailendra Rawat), Rudrapur (Vikas Sharma), Almora (Ajay Verma), Pithoragarh (Kalpana Devlal), and Haldwani (Gajraj Bisht).Arti Bhandari, an Independent nominee, won the Srinagar mayoral seat in Pauri district, Kumar said. Congress, which won two mayoral seats in the last urban local body polls held in 2018, drew a blank this time.In municipal councils too, it finished third behind the BJP and independents.
In the run-up to the urban local body polls, the BJP had sought votes in the name of a triple-engine government to keep the pace of development "uninterrupted" in the state. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami congratulated the winning party candidates and asked them to speed up development works in their respective areas.