LUCKNOW After a disastrous defeat in the assembly polls last year, Congress on Saturday failed to open its account in the mayoral polls and the by-elections. Arguably, the only saving grace for the grand old party was that a few of its candidates managed to leave behind their SP and BSP counterparts and emerged as the first runner-up.
In some good news for the Congress, its candidate won post of Raebareli’s nagar palika parishad chairman. Congress’ Shatrughan Sonkar defeated the BJP’s Shalini Kannaujia for the position. However, out of nine nagar panchayat chairperson seats in the district, five went to the BJP and only one to Congress. The remaining three were clinched by the independents. Meanwhile, in Amethi, one of the nagar palika parishad chairperson seats went to the Congress and the other to the BJP. Congress’ Manisha won the Jais seat while BJP’s Reshmi secured the Gauriganj seat.
Even Congress leaders admitted that the party did not bring its “A game” to the table as none of its senior leaders campaigned ahead of the civic polls. Its candidate Mohammad Rizwan lost only by a margin of 3,643 votes securing 1,17,832 (40.86%) votes in Moradabad. BSP’s Mohammed Yamin and SP’s Sayed Raisuddin got 13,447 votes respectively. In the newly-constituted municipal corporation of Shahjahanpur, Congress’ Nikhat Iqbal got 50,484 (30.44%) votes while SP’s Mala Rathore and BSP’s Shagufta Anzum got 20,155 and 5,545 votes respectively.
In Mathura, Congress candidate remained at the third position despite supporting two candidates. Congress’ election symbol was allotted to Shyam Sunder Upadhyay Bittu. The party, however, extended support to one Raj Kumar Rawat as well. While Shyam Sunder Upadhyay secured 35,173 votes, Rawat also pocketed over 30,000 votes. Upadhyay was the second runner-up. He was preceded by BSPs Raza Mohtesham Ahmed, who stood second with 35,191 votes. In Kanpur Nagar too, Congress candidate Asha Vikas Awasthi remained at third place.
Significantly, this was the first electoral test for the team formed by Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Brijlal Khabri. “Our team was not fully constituted. We always said that the Congress will perform better than the previous urban local body elections in the state and we will achieve that. We hope to put forth a better performance on the posts of corporators, chairmen and the members in urban local bodies than the previous elections,” said Khabri.
Notably, voting in 760 urban local bodies was held in two phases for 14,684 posts in 17 nagar ngams, 199 nagar palika parishads, and 544 nagar panchayats.
