Uttar Pradesh Civic Election Results: Voting was held in three phases over 10 days
Here are the live updates of Uttar Pradesh civic polls results:
BSP mayor candidate is now leading in Meerut. Earlier, BJP was leading here.
BJP continues its lead in Allahabad Municipal Corporation. Abhilasha Gupta is BJP's mayor candidate.
Initial trends show BJP is leading in Varanasi. The temple-town is PM Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency.
Mayawati's BSP is leading in two municipal corporations. These are Jhansi and Firozabad.
Intial trends show BJP is leading in seven out of 16 municipal corporations. The party is leading in Moradabad, Ayodhya - Faizabad, Varanasi, Meerut, Saharanpur, Lucknow and Ghaziabad.
We are trying our best so that counting of votes can be completed by 2.00 pm, says Lucknow's district magistrate Kushal Raj Sharma.
Counting of postal ballot ends in Allahabad. BJP mayor candidate Abhilasha Gupta leads. Samajawadi Party candidate at second spot, Congress candidate at third position.
Initial trends show BJP leading in Moradabad. The party is trailing in Firozabad.
Just In: BJP mayor candidates leading in Meerut, Saharanpur, Lucknow, Ghaziabad and Gorakhpur, reports ANI.
Chief Minister Adityanath began his campaign with a rally in Ayodhya, which, along with twin city Faizabad, has just been upgraded to a municipal corporation. A powerful local leader in eastern UP and the head priest of the Gorakhnath temple in his home town Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath served as a BJP lawmaker for nine years and is leading the party in an election across the state for the first time ever.
According to the State Election Commission, 24 districts had voted in the first phase of the polls on November 22, while 25 districts went to the polls in second phase. As many as 26 districts voted in the third phase on November 29.
The Samajwadi Party, which lost power in UP to the BJP in March, has accused the ruling party of "misusing government machinery to fix the elections" alleging that it tried to rig electronic voting machines. The BJP has called the allegations baseless.
The first two phases of polling on November 22 and 26 had recorded a turnout of 52.59 and 49.3, respectively. The third phase witnessed a voter turnout of 53 per cent even as there were some complaints of voters' names being missing.
In this time's contest the Samajwadi Party and the BSP, crushed in the assembly elections, are contesting on their symbols, but in sharp contrast to Yogi Adityanath's high-powered campaign, neither Samajwadi chief Akhilesh Yadav, nor Mayawati campaigned.
The 652 local bodies for which elections were held, cover over 30 per cent of the state's population, the chief minister has pointed out underscoring how key the civic polls are.
In 2012, a majority of the councils were won by Independents, backed by the Samajwadi Party and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which did not contest the elections directly. Of the 423 nagar panchayats, Independents had won 352 while the BJP got 36.
In 2012, the BJP had won 10 of 12 corporations, which have this time been expanded to 16. But of the 194 municipal councils (198 this year), the party had only won 41.
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