UP zila panchayat polls: BJP sweeps western UP districts, SP gets Etah, RLD wins Baghpat after high drama

Agra/Meerut/Bareilly: The ruling BJP swept most of the zila panchayat's top post in western Uttar Pradesh following the election results on Saturday. They, however, failed to secure a win in two prestigious fights - Baghpat and Etah.

In Baghpat, after a high voltage drama that went on for a fortnight beginning with RLD-SP combine candidate Mamta Kishore joining BJP only to file nomination as RLD candidate hours later to withdrawal of her candidature by an "imposter" even as the real candidate was holed up in a Rajasthan based resort, the RLD-SP candidate eventually managed to win the seat defeating BJP candidate Babli Devi by five votes.

Kishore got 12 votes and Devi seven. The collectorate witnessed unprecedented security arrangements. Notably, the UP election commission had also ordered a probe.

"It is peoples' victory and my primary concern will be to work for their upliftment," Mamta Kishore said.

RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary tweeted, "The consistent pressure maintained by people of Baghpat did not allow high-handedness in the election of district panchayat president."

In Etah, the Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate secured an impressive victory. Twenty-four district council members out of 30 voted for Rekha Yadav. BJP backed Vineeta Yadav got four votes while two members' votes were cancelled.

Rekha Yadav is the wife of former district council president Jogendra Yadav and sister-in-law of former SP MLA Rameshwar Yadav. The Yadav brothers were labelled “land mafia” by the district administration recently.

The BJP won most of the other seats in western UP without much of a fight from the beleaguered Opposition.

BJP candidate Manju Bhadoriya was elected unopposed in Agra. They clinched all nine districts of Bareilly zone.

They won Kasganj, Firozabad and Hapur districts too. In Kasganj, BJP candidate Ratnesh Yadav defeated SP's Smarath Yadav by five votes while in Firozabad, Haristha Singh beat SP's Ruchi Yadav by six votes.

In Bareilly zone, they were ahead in counting and expected to take Bareilly, Budaun, Rampur, Sambhal and Bijnor districts. While in Shahjahanpur, Pilibhit, Moradabad and Amroha, the ruling party's candidates won unopposed.

SP's Sunita Shakya put up a fight in Budaun where BJP’s Varsha Yadav reportedly won. In once SP leader Azam Khan's stronghold Rampur, BJP's Khyaliram Lodhi went past SP candidate Nasreen Jahan by five votes.

In the keenly contested Muzaffarnagar where Union minister Sanjeev Balyan's cousin Satender was up against BJP, the ruling party managed to make it a one-sided affair.

Veerpal Nirwal, the BJP candidate, beat Satender Balyan, who was put up by Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), by 26 votes.

Muzaffarnagar has 43 zila panchayat members, in which 34 voted. Thirty of them gave their support to Nirwal while only four backed Balyan's cousin. Nine abstained.

Later, Satender accused BJP members of "putting pressure on the local administration".

BJP is now on course to win more than 60 out of 75 seats in the state. The SP is expected to come a distant second with a mere six seats.