The Hindu : Other States / Madhya Pradesh News : BJP captures eight mayoral posts in M.P.

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Friday, Nov 26, 2004

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BJP captures eight mayoral posts in M.P.

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL, NOV. 25. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Madhya Pradesh has demonstrated that it continues to retain its support base among urban voters by winning the mayoral elections in almost every big city across the State. The State capital has turned out to be an exception where the BJP's mayoral candidate, Bhagwandas Sabnani, was trailing behind the Congress party's Sunil Sood, who had established a convincing lead and was marching towards victory as counting of votes was coming to an end here this evening.

Out of the ten results for the mayors' election that were declared by this evening, eight had gone in favour of the BJP while independent candidates had won the mayors' post in Dewas (Sharad Pachunkar) and Katni(Sandeep Jaiswal).

The BJP has won the mayor's election in Gwalior (Vivek Narayan Shejwalkar), Indore (Uma Shashi Sharma), Khandwa (Veer Singh Hindon), Burhanpur (Atul Patel), Sagar (Pradeeep Laria), Jabalpur(Sushila Singh), Rewa (Virendra Gupta) and Satna(Vimla Pande). The BJP has also won a majority in most of these corporations. The Congress, however, has taken a lead in the ward-level elections in Burhanpur, where it has won 23 of the 48 corporators' seats and in Katni where it has captured18 of the 45 corporators' seats. Notwithstanding its claim that Gwalior is its time-tested bastion, the BJP could win only 23 of the 60 corporators' seats in the Gwalior Municipal Corporation. While the Congress came a close second winning 17 seats, the BSP won three, the CPI-M one, the Samajwadi Party three, while the Independents captured 13 municipal wards in Gwalior. In Jabalpur also the Congress was neck- and- neck with the BJP as it had won 25 ward level seats against the BJP's 31. The BJP's success in Indore has been described by the State PWD Minister and former Mayor of Indore, KailashVijayvargiya, as the people's mandate in support of the good work done by the Indore Municipal Corporation during his tenure as Mayor. He has also described the victory as people's unflinching support for the BJP.

The victory of Uma Shashi Sharma in the Indore Mayor's election is significant since a major controversy had erupted over her nomination and the former Union Minister and BJP M.P. from Indore, Sumitra Mahajan, had even submitted her resignation to the party president, L.K. Advani, complaining that proper procedure had not been followed in selecting the party candidate. The BJP's State Election committee had refused to change the candidate after reconsidering the issue.

In the municipality and nagar panchayat elections, unlike the big cities, the electoral fortunes have fluctuated mostly between the BJP and the Congress. When approached for comments, the State Congress general secretary and spokesman, Manak Agrawal, said that the BJP has been able to capture most municipal corporations through booth-capturing, bogus voting and large-scale intimidation of voters.

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BJP captures eight mayoral posts in M.P.