BHOPAL: The ruling BJP won 7 of the 11 municipal corporations in Madhya Pradesh where polls were held in the first phase, but suffered setbacks in Gwalior and Jabalpur, where it lost the mayoral elections. Low turnout (61%) in the July 6 voting had kept both BJP and Congress worried but the saffron camp had the upper hand on results day. Chief minister Shivraj Singh dedicated BJP's victory to the welfare schemes and development policy of PM Narendra Modi.
BJP won Indore, Bhopal, Ujjain, Sagar, Satna, Khandwa and Burhanpur municipal corporations. Congress won Chhindwara, Gwalior and Jabalpur Municipal Corporations. And AAP won Singrauli, marking its electoral debut in MP. In Gwalior, Congress's mayor candidate Shobha Sikarwar beat BJP's Suman Sharma by over 26,000 votes. It's after 57 long years that there will be a Congress mayor in Gwalior. It's being seen as a setback to Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia - whose rebellion toppled the Congress government and brought BJP back to power - and his Union Cabinet colleague Narendra Tomar. It will give more ammo not only to Congress, but also BJP old-timers in Gwalior, to target Scindia.
In Bhopal, the relatively unknown Malti Rai defeated Congress heavyweight Vibha Patel, a former mayor, by a record margin of over 94,000 votes. In Indore, BJP's Pushyamitra Bhargava defeated Congress MLA Sanjay Shukla by 1.3 lakh votes.
2 new players emerge in MP poll arena - AAP, AIMIM
Sixteen months before the assembly elections in the state, two new political parties have made their entry into the state - AAP and AIMIM. In a stunner, AAP mayoral candidate for the industrial town of Singrauli, Rani Agarwal, won with a margin of 9,149 votes beating the BJP's Chandra Pratap Vishwakarma and Congress' Arvind Singh Chandel.
In Burhanpur, an AIMIM mayoral candidate polled more than 10,000 votes in her favour resulting in the defeat of Congress' Shanaz Ismail by a narrow margin of 388 votes against BJP's Madhuri Patel. Winning BJP mayoral candidate secured 52,629 votes, Congress candidate Ismail received 52,241 votes while the AIMIM candidate Shayesta Sohail Hashmi pulled 10,322 votes.
AIMIM candidate from ward number 14 in Khandwa Municipal Corporation Shakira Bilal defeated Congress' Noorjahan Begum by a margin of 285 votes. Two more AIMIM corporator candidates from Jabalpur also won - Parveen Mateen from ward no 49 and Samreen Qureshi from ward 51.
AAP mayoral candidate from Singrauli Rani Agarwal had contested the 2018 assembly election on an AAP ticket but lost. However, for the Singrauli municipal corporation elections, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal campaigned for her three days before polling.
The total number of votes cast in Singrauli was 1,06,000 of which Agarwal secured 34,585 while her nearest rival, the BJP's Chandra Pratap Vishwakarma got 25,233 and Congress candidate Arvind Chandel received 25,031.
In a state which has majorly seen bipartite politics with the BJP and Congress, no third party whether BSP or the Samajwadi Party could make much progress. For 65 years since the birth of the state, politics has always been the struggle between the Jan Sangh and Congress and later the BJP and Congress. But after Sunday's urban civic poll results, it was apparent that AIMIM has spoiled the chances of Congress win while AAP has cut into BJP votes.
While campaigning in Bhopal before the urban civic poll, AIMIM leader Assaduddin Owaisi said his party would field candidates for assembly elections next year. AAP which had contested the 2018 assembly elections is also likely to contest 2023. In such a scenario, both BJP and Congress might have to rethink new strategies for the assembly elections next year.
