The ruling BJP on Friday forged ahead of its rivals, leading on 14 of the 16 mayoral seats in Uttar Pradesh where the civic bodies polls were held in three phases.
In the remaining two places, the BSP was leading, according to trends from these seats in the first four hours of counting of votes for all the 652 urban local bodies that began at 8am.
As per initial trends available, the BJP candidates were leading in seats including Lucknow, Allahabad, Aligarh, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Gorakhpur, Faizabad and Moradabad municipal corporations while the BSP was ahead in Jhansi and Agra municipal corporations.
The civic polls are being seen as a referendum on Yogi Adityanath government’s performance in the past seven months.
The BJP had won 10 out of 12 mayoral seats in 2012.
Deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma when asked to comment on trends said the people of the state have shown full faith in the BJP and its ideology and discarded the SP, the BSP and the Congress.
