SP sweeps district panchayat chief's polls, BJP, BSP humbled

Uttar Pradesh's ruling Samajwadi Party got a major boost on Thursday when its candidates for the district panchayat chiefs won on 60 of the 74 seats that went for polls earlier in the day. The BJP and the BSP suffered major setbacks as the former won no seat and the latter just one.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was hit the hardest as the party could not get one single candidate of district panchayat chairman elected in Purvanchal or eastern Uttar Pradesh, polls for which were held earlier on Thursday. What added to the insult is that its candidates lost in all the 10 districts neighbouring Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency.

SP candidates won in nine of the 10 districts while one candidate supported by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) - Pramila Singh - won from Mirzapur, winning 33 votes while her nearest rival - SP's Pairo Devi could garner only 10. SP candidates - Sudhir Paswan (Ballia), Virendra Yadav (Ghazipur), Ansha Yadav (Mau), Meera Yadav (Azamgarh), and Kajal Yadav (Gyanpur-Bhadohi) had already won the polls unopposed.

In the polls for Chandauli on Thursday, SP candidate Sarita Singh got 19 votes to win, beating her nearest rival from BJP who polled 16 votes. In Sonebhadra, SP's Anil Yadav and in Jaunpur, its Rajbahadur Yadav won the high-stake elections. In Jaunpur, the SP candidate polled 81 votes and his rival, an independent, could get only two votes.

Even in Varanasi, SP's Aparajita Sonkar polled 30 votes against BJP-Apna Dal's combined candidate Amit Sonkar who got 17 votes.