BJP clean sweeps UP civic polls, wins 14 out of 16 seats

Lucknow: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday made a clean sweep in Uttar Pradesh by winning 14 out of the 16 mayoral seats in the civic polls while Samajwadi Party and Congress could not open their accounts.

The remaining two seats were won by Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

Out of 652 seats, the BJP had won 341 seats, beating rival parties by a distance.

The Congress got its biggest electoral jolt after the BJP won the Amethi Nagar Panchayat by over a 1,000 votes.

Amethi is Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha constituency, and has long been a bastion of the Gandhi family.

The BJP’s Chandrama Devi won the Amethi Nagar Panchayat by 1035 votes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to congratulate Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and thank the people of the state.

"Development has triumphed once again in the country. Thank people of the state for this grand victory. Many congratulations to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and all party workers. This win motivates us to work even harder for people's betterment," he wrote.

The civic polls are being seen as a referendum of Yogi Adityanath government's performance in the past seven months.

The BJP won 10 out of 12 mayoral seats in 2012.

The results of the UP civic polls are an eye opener for everyone, according to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Crediting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the "historic win", he said the victory in the polls was possible because of Modi's vision and BJP chief Amit Shah's guidance.

He also said that the BJP would now look forward to achieve the goal of 100 per cent success in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma said people have shown full faith in the BJP and its ideology and discarded the SP, the BSP and the Congress.