Bettering its 2017 performance, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) wrested the Aligarh mayor seat from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and continued its dominion over Agra, where it has not lost since 1989.

The party also won Firozabad and Mathura-Vrindavan, where municipal elections were held for the second time.

Aligarh, one of the only two places where the BJP had suffered a defeat last time, is all set to welcome its new mayor Prashant Singhal, who won by a massive margin of over 50,000 after 26 rounds of counting on Saturday.

Singhal, whose nomination came rather as a surprise for his reputation of being more an industrialist than a politician, was up against the SP’s Jamirullah Khan—a two-time MLA from Kol in Aligarh—who came a distant second in the poll contest and the BSP’s Salman Shaid, a recent addition to the party from the SP (Samajwadi Party).

In Agra, the BJP faced a tough battle with the BSP’s Lata Valmiki leading the counting for a better part of the day. However, the BJP candidate won the latter counting rounds and maintained the victory margin till the end.

Agra, a reserved seat a woman from the scheduled caste community, will now welcome its third woman mayor Hemlata Diwakar. Baby Rani Maurya and Anjula Mahour were both from the BJP. While Maurya is now a cabinet minister in the Yogi government, Mahour is the Hathras MLA.

The new Agra mayor had won the Agra MLA seat but was denied a ticket in the last year’s assembly election.