Hindustan Surkhiyan Desk: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged as many as 34 seats in the election to the Uttarakhand Civic Body polls followed by Congress which managed to win 25 seats. Independent candidates won 23 seats whereas as Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) managed to get only 1 seat here. The counting of votes is underway and the final results are likely to be announced soon. The voting for the Civic body polls took place on November 18 and counting of votes started on November 20.
Over 60 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in urban local body polls in Uttarakhand. The voting concluded peacefully in all 84 urban bodies, including seven municipal corporations, 39 municipal councils and 38 Nagar Panchayats.
Results for some of mayoral seats in the state include Tanakpur – Vipin Kumar (Independent); Champawat – Vijay Verma (Congress); Banbasa – Renu Agarwal (Independent); Chinyalisaur – Bina (Independent); Barkot – Anupama (Independent); Purola – Harimohan Singh (Congress); Joshimath – Shailendra Singh Panwar (Congress); Dharali – Deepa Devi (BJP); Narendra Nagar – Rajendra Vikram Singh Panwar (BJP); Kirti Nagar – Kailashi Devi (BJP); Devprayag – Kashnkant Kotiyal (Independent); Gaja – Meena Khati (BJP); Ukhimath – Vijay Singh (BJP) among others.
Dehradun seat was won by BJP candidate Sunil Uniyal Gama who defeated Congress candidate and former cabinet minister Dinesh Agarwal by a difference of more than 35,000 votes. Other BJP candidate who won the mayoral seats in the state were Anit Mamgai from Rishikesh, Usha Chaudhary from Kashipur and Rampal Singh from Rudrapur. Independents which included both Congress and BJP rebels also did well in the civic body elections here.
The BJP had alleged irregularities in the voters’ list and sought a high-level probe into the matter and also asked the Election Commission (EC) to punish officials responsible for the same.
The polls witnessed a decent voter turnaround with over 60 per cent of the electorate had exercised their franchise on Sunday. Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat thanked the people of the state for their “enthusiastic” participation in the elections. As per an EC report, there were 23.53 lakh voters in the state out of which 12.20 lakh were male and 11.33 lakh female.
