The Hindu : Other States / Madhya Pradesh News : Cong. gains ground in civic polls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 25, 2004

Other States

Other States - Madhya Pradesh

Cong. gains ground in civic polls

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL, NOV. 24. The initial results of the civic elections for 14 municipal corporations, 86 municipal councils and 236 nagar panchayats in Madhya Pradesh show that the Congress party has recovered some of its popular base that had been eroded in the State Assembly elections about a year ago.

As the first trend started coming in this evening, of the first 20 municipality results, the BJP had won 13, Congress 6 while one post of municipal chairman had gone to an independent candidate. At the nagar panchayat level, the Congress party was neck-to-neck with the BJP when fifty of the 236 results came in.

The final results for the mayoral candidates were expected to come in by tomorrow morning. However, the trends for the mayoral elections from the big cities showed that the Congress candidates were neck-to-neck with their main Bharatiya Janata Party rivals in Bhopal and Jabalpur. In Bhopal, the Congress candidate, Sunil Sood had taken an early lead over the BJP candidate, Bhagwandas Sabnani, but when the counting was midway this evening, Mr. Sabnani was leading over his nearest Congress rival. Similarly, it was also proving to be a see-saw battle in Jabalpur, where the Congress and the BJP candidates were locked in a stiff fight. In Indore and Gwalior, however, BJP's mayoral candidates had taken comfortable lead over their nearest Congress rivals.

The polling for civic elections in the State was marred by large-scale incidents of booth capturing and violence. Even today, it is learnt that the State Election Commission received petitions from some candidates for recounting of votes.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Other States

News Update

Stories in this Section

Cong. gains ground in civic polls

Lecturer held