The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday swept the urban local body elections in Uttarakhand by 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, the remaining one was bagged by an Independent candidate, State Election Commissioner Sushil Kumar said. 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 added.
On Thursday, polling was held for 11 municipal corporations, 43 municipal councils, and 46 nagar panchayats using ballot. The voter turnout was recorded at 65.4 per cent. In the municipal elections, a total of 5,405 candidates were in the fray. 72 ran for 11 mayoral posts 445 for municipal council chairperson and 4,888 for municipal councillors and members.
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).
In Pauri district's Srinagar, Arti Bhandari won the mayoral seat as an Independent, Kumar said. Surprisingly, Congress failed to open its account in the polls. It had won two mayoral seats in the last urban local body polls held in 2018.
(With PTI Inputs)