With this win, the BJP now controls all the 8 municipal corporations of Gujarat besides 25 of the 26 district panchayats in the state
Gandhinagar : The electoral whitewash of the Congress, a legacy of the Narendra Modi era in Gujarat, endures under new chief minister Anandiben Patel as well. It lost its last urban bastion when the BJP pushed it out of power in the Junagadh Municipal Corporation, the results of which were declared on Tuesday. The BJP won 41 out of the total 60 seats.
All eyes were on the election results as this is the first key political engagement after Anandiben took over in Gujarat from present Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The results mark a political consolidation for Patel.
With this victory, the BJP now controls all the eight municipal corporations of Gujarat besides 25 of the 26 district panchayats in the state. The eight Municipal Corporations are Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Surat, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Gandhinagar and Junagadh.
The BJP rules the 182-member Gujarat Legislative Assembly with 115 seats to its credit, besides in 125 of the total 159 municipalities of the state.
The importance of the victory was reflected in the encomiums it earned from the Prime Minister. Narendra Modi congratulated the state BJP unit for its splendid performance and felicitated the party workers for their hard work which had earned excellent results.
The results were a shocker of sorts for the Gujarat Congress which had just months ago received a humiliating battering losing all the 26 seats in the Lok Sabha elections from Gujarat.
It could manage only 16 seats with 2 going to the BSP and one to an independent. The elections to the JMC were held on Sunday. Polling was held in 59 of the total 60 seats since the Congress had bagged one uncontested.
In the last civic election in Junagadh held in 2009, the Congress party won 28 out of 51 seats, with the BJP getting only 21. The number of seats later went upto 60 after three more wards were added in an expansion of the city limits.
R K MISRA
