M.P. civic polls: BJP wins, Cong. gains, AAP debuts. AIMIM also gets noticed in State

ongress candidate for mayor Jagat Bahadur Singh ‘Annu’ celebrating in Jabalpur on Sunday. PTI 

Special CorrespondentRAIPUR

In a booster ahead of the next year’s Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won seven out of 11 mayoral posts in Madhya Pradesh civic elections whose results were declared on Sunday. The Congress won three, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), contesting the civic body polls for the first time in the State, will now have one mayor in the State.

The election also saw another debutant, the Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeens (AIMIM), winning at least one corporator seat in Khandwa and being blamed by the Congress for its loss in the Muslim-dominated Burhanpur municipal corporation which the BJP won by a slender margin.

The 11 municipal corporations -- Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Sagar, Satna, Singrauli, Chhindwara, Khandwa, Burhanpur and Ujjain – had gone to the polls in the first phase of elections on July 6. All 11 corporations had sitting BJP mayors.

The BJP has retained Bhopal, Indore, Burhanpur, Satna, Ujjain, Khandwa and Sagar. The Congress emerged victorious in Jabalpur, Gwalior and Chhindwara, while AAP’s Rani Agrawal won in Singrauli, the only city where party convener Arvind Kejriwal had campaigned in these elections.

PM’s tweet

The celebrations in the BJP camp were led by PM Narendra Modi who thanked all voters “for reposing their faith in the BJP”. “This victory is a symbol of the unwavering faith of the people in CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government,” he tweeted on late Sunday evening.

Mr. Chouhan, who hailed the victory as “historic”, claimed that the party had won over 80% seats in the nagar panchayat and nagar parishad polls and also performed very well in the 11 municipal corporations. The party’s State president, V.D. Sharma, too said the BJP had won a record number of corporator posts and credited the party workers and its booth management strategy.

For the Congress, its State president and former CM Kamal Nath termed the results as encouraging. “We have won three mayoral elections... We won the top post of Gwalior city after 50 years,” he said while accusing the BJP of winning the elections with the help of police and administration.

Hailing the victory of Ms. Agrawal, who defeated her BJP rival Chandrapratap Vishwakarma by a margin of 9,231 votes, AAP dubbed its debut as “grand entry” and an indication people were liking the party’s “honest politics of work”.

Despite the skewed numbers, there are gains for the Congress that improved its tally and gave a tough fight to the BJP in Bhopal, Indore and Burhanpur while wresting back stronghold Chhindwara, a traditional stronghold and Mr. Nath’s home turf.

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