A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost three of its four Nagar Palika chairperson seats and could not secure any win on four Nagar Panchayats in rural segments of Ghaziabad, its senior party leaders said that they will brainstorm about the loss soon to take up corrective measures before the 2024 general elections.

The counting for the nine local bodies took place on Saturday and after party’s big win in the corporation, the loss of chairperson seats of three Nagar Palikas of Loni, Khoda and Muradnagar and no win on any of the four Nagar Panchayat chairperson seats of Niwari, Patla, Dasna and Faridnagar, have sent the party leaders into a huddle.

The party at present has all the five sitting MLAs in Muradnagar, Loni and Sahibabad.

“We admit the loss in Nagar Palikas and no win of chairperson seats in four Nagar Panchayats in Ghaziabad. We could not win four Nagar Panchayts in 2017 as well. We will soon assess the loss and find out the reasons. It is to admit that our workers really worked hard at ground level but the results were not of our liking,” said Satendra Shishodia, BJP’s regional president (western UP).

“Our performance in local body election this time has been very encouraging in terms of results. This time we have won all four corporations in western UP and our members in Palikas have increased from 142 in 2017 to 182 this time. This election we won 18 Nagar Palika chairperson seats as compared to 14 in last elections while we have also won in 18 Nagar Panchayat seats as against 11 in 2017,” Shishodia added.

However, the party poor show in rural segment local bodies unfolded on Saturday after the counting got completed.

The state election commission results indicate that independent candidates outperform the party in power candidates. The independents won 58 member seats in four Nagar Palikas in Ghaziabad while the BJP candidates won on 57.

The four Nagar Palikas together had 148 member seats to be won. The rest included 17 seats won by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and 15 won by the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidates, among others.

Likewise, the BJP candidates also faced drubbing in four Nagar Panchayts of Patla, Niwari, Faridnagar and Dasna.

Together, the four local bodies offered 46 member seats in Ghaziabad.

Here, the independents again outperformed by a huge margin and won 41 seats while the BJP could win only five. No other opposition candidates could make inroads on any of the member seats.

As per records,, BJP’s sitting chairperson Reena Bhati lost from Khoda while Ranjita Dhama (earlier from the BJP) secured the chairperson seat from Loni on a ticket given by the RLD. The BJP could not retain its Muradnagar seat as well and it was won by BSP’s Chammi Chaudhary who is wife of former BSP MLA Wahab Chaudhary.

“We lost the election by just 5769 votes while we were estimating a win by 8000-10000 votes. We estimate that this has resulted due to dissenters in the party who were not given tickets and also there was collective opposition against us. Otherwise, there was no reason we could have lost,” said Yogesh Bhati, brother-in-law of Khoda’s outgoing chairperson Reena Bhati.

This election, the Ghaziabad district showed dismal turnout with overall being figure being 45.52 per cent which includes 41.43 per cent for urban segment of Ghaziabad municipal-corporation, 44 for Khoda, 70.42 for Muradnagar, 55 for Modinagar, 47.16 for Loni, 65.37 for Dasna, 72.37 for Niwari, 73.1 for Patla and 82.18 for Faridnagar.

The overall turnout in 2017 was 46.18 per cent with 41.74 per cent for Ghaziabad municipal-corporation, 50.68 for Khoda, 65.19 for Muradnagar, 59.39 for Modinagar, 49.22 for Loni, 64.58 for Dasna, 74.96 for Niwari, 75.33 for Patla and 72.96 for Faridnagar.

The political analysts said that the loss of Nagar Palikas and Nagar Panchayts could be due to several factors.

“The personality of candidate plays a major role. If there is huge win by independents, then party should think that they did not field appropriate candidates. Further, parties like RLD made inroads into Jat and minority votes. In local body elections, dissenters play a major role in candidates’ loss. They work together but internally they make moves against the party candidates,” said KK Sharma, associate professor (History) from CCS University, Meerut.