In a close contest, Congress's Sumitra Prasad has just scraped through, winning the Nainital Zila Panchayat president election, with BJP's Neema Arya securing just one vote less than the winner. While Prasad bagged 16 votes, Arya secured 15 votes in this closely fought electoral battle for the post of Nainital Zila Panchayat president held here on Tuesday.
The trend of Congress coming out in flying colours in a series of electoral battles since it had faced lok Sabha poll debacle over two months back has continued in this election as the party stamped its sway over the vice-president's post too in the district. While the Congress candidate Pushkar Nayal received 16 votes for the post, BJP's Dheeraj Kumar got 15 votes for the same.
The polling for the posts of the president and vice- president of the Nainital zila panchyat began as scheduled from 9 am and continued till 2 pm on Tuesday.
"The counting of votes was taken up from 3 pm. All the 31 members cast votes to elect president and vice-president for the Nainital Zila Panchayat body," said Akshat Gupta, District Election Officer (DEO), Nainital. All the votes polled for the election of the president and vice-president of the Nainital Zila Panchyat were found valid, he added.