Samajwadi Party has questioned the claims of the BJP of sweeping the urban local body elections saying the ruling party won only in nagar nigam and lost heavily in election of chairman and ward members of nagar palika parishad and nagar panchyats.
“The only major victory the BJP and its drum beaters are gloating about is the Mayor elections where it won 14 out of total 16 seats of mayors. A big hype has been created by the media that the BJP has bulldosed all its political rivals but the situation on the ground is exactly opposite as the top leaders of the BJP lost ground in urban local body elections’’, said the SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav on Tuesday.
“The media has created a mountain out of the molehill since December 1, the day results were announced, over a “BJP sweep” in urban local bodies elections, the results of the chairman and ward members of the Nagar palika parishad and Nagar panchyat demonstrate huge loss for the BJP and the waning of pro BJP mood that helped it win UP assembly elections barely eight months ago’’, said the SP leader.
“Its true that the BJP which fought the Nagar Palika Parishad and nagar panchyat elections stood first among all the other political parties that contested, including the SP, BSP, Congress and the Rashtriya lok Dal, it also lost the maximum number of seats in both the election’’, said Ram Gopal Yadav.
He said the BJP won 14 out of 16 mayors. Out of total seats of 198 chairman of nagar palika parishad the BJP won only 68 and lost 130 seats of chairman. Out of 438 seats of chairman of nagar panchyat , the BJP won only 100 seats and lost 338 seats. The SP leader said out of total 5,261 ward members of the Nagar palika parishad, the BJP won only 914 seats and lost 4,347 seats. Out of total 5,390 seats of ward members in Nagar panchyat, the BJP won only 662 seats and lost as many as 4,728 seats.
“The BJP had polled 43 percent of votes in Assembly elections held barely eight months ago. Its vote share plummeted to below 30 percent in civic elections. The BJP alone won 71of the 80 lok Sabha seats in the 2014 general elections, which is roughly 89 percent. Then in the February Assembly polls, the BJP won 312 seats in a House of 403, which works out to 77 percent. In percentage terms in the Assembly polls, the BJP percentage of votes had then jumped from less than 15 percent in 2012 to around 43 percent a quantum jump. Given this background, the BJP performance in local body polls is a let-down’’, argued the SP leader.
SP, leader said the media has totally blacked out the results of the nagar palila parishad and nagar panchyat where the SP, BSP, Congress and the independents together have won almost 70 percent of the seats of chairman.
He said contrary to projection in the media the results of the urban local body elections are a huge setback for the BJP. He said in Varanasi, the lok Sabha constituency of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP lost the election of chairman of the nagar palika parishad of Gangapur and Ramnagar. He said in Varanasi nagar nigam out of 90 seats of corporators the BJP won only 36 seats while the Congress and SP together won 44 seats and the rest were won by the independents.