By Aiswarya Raj
A day before the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is rolled out in Uttarakhand on Monday, the extent of the BJP’s sweep of the local body polls in the hill state became clear as the party won 10 of the 11 mayoral posts, wresting two from the Congress. With this massive win, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami cemented his leadership in the state in the “semi-final of power”.
Even as the Congress drew a blank in the mayoral posts, the BJP put up a strong show in the polls to 43 municipal councils and 46 nagar panchayats in which it won or was leading in 32 of the total 89.
The BJP won the mayoral polls in Dehradun, Rishikesh, Roorkee, Haldwani, Almora, Kashipur, Rudrapur, Pithoragarh, Kotdwar, and Haridwar. In the newly constituted municipal corporation of Srinagar, the home turf of state Education Minister Dhan Singh Rawat, Independent Aarti Bhandari was declared the winner while the BJP came second. In Roorkee, Rishikesh and Pithoragarh, the Congress was pushed to a distant third.
In the Dehradun mayoral poll, the first electoral test for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) following the exit of its CM face Ajay Kothiyal after the 2022 Assembly polls, the party polled fewer votes than NOTA.
With counting still ongoing for the councils and panchayats, as of Sunday evening, the BJP had won 32 nagar panchayats while the Congress won 27. Independents won 28 while the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) bagged two.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
