Uttarakhand civic polls: BJP bags 5 mayor posts, Congress 2; repolling in one ward today
Among the municipal councils in Uttarakhand, 16 chairman posts went to the Congress’ kitty while the BJP bagged 12. Eleven elected chairmen of municipal councils are independent candidates while one belongs to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
When the counting of votes for 83 out of the 84 urban local bodies (ULBs) that went to polls on November 18 ended on Wednesday morning, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept five out of the seven mayor posts across the state. The other two went to Congress. In one ward, repolling is being held on Thursday.
Among the municipal councils, 16 chairman posts went to the Congress’ kitty while the BJP bagged 12. Eleven elected chairmen of municipal councils are independent candidates while one belongs to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Among the town panchayats, 17 elected chairmen are from the BJP, seven from the Congress and 12 are independent candidates.
Repolling is being held on Thursday in ward number 7 in Pokhri town panchayat of Chamoli district. The presiding officer of the ward did not sign the ballot papers during polling, as a result of which all the votes were cancelled. “Voting will take place here again on Thursday from 8am to 5pm and counting will take place after that,” state election commissioner Chandra Shekhar Bhatt said. Results will be announced on Thursday itself, he added.
The counting of votes began on Tuesday at 8am and concluded on Wednesday at 10 am. “Result of Haridwar Municipal Corporation was the last to be finalised. Officials worked throughout the night in different shifts for theses bigger corporations to finish the counting,” Bhatt said.
Since the counting began, the results were available online on State Election Commission’s (SEC) website and an Android-based mobile application launched by SEC for the results. While the website crashed a few times on Tuesday morning due to overload, the servers were restored and the real-time updating of results continued for the rest of the day.
Election commissioner Bhatt said the counting took place peacefully throughout the state and the website helped everyone to keep a track of the counting.