UP Municipal Election Results 2023: The BJP has won the urban local bodies (ULB) elections in Uttar Pradesh, the results of which were declared on the same day as Karnataka. All the parties had thrown their might in these high-pitch elections. While Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath made a strong pitch for triple engine sarkar highlighting his strong law and order track record, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav made a pitch for social justice and caste-based census, while Bahujan Samajwadi Party supremo Mayawati played the Dalit-plus-Muslim card.
The elections across 760 ULBs were held for 14,684 posts for three tiers:
- Nagar Nigam (including 17 mayoral seats)
- Nagar Palika
- Nagar Panchayat
While the BJP swept all 17 mayoral posts, it increased its tally in Palika Parishad Adhyaksh by 24 seats and almost doubled its tally in Nagar Panchayat Adhyaksh seats.
Normally, the party which is in power in the state wins ULB polls. The state governments enjoy legislative, administrative, judicial and financial control over the ULBs. The municipal commissioners enjoy more powers than mayors (adhyaksha).
The BJP has been winning the mayoral elections since 2006 as the audience is urban, its traditional strength. With the aspirational urban voter, development, infrastructure, nationalism and other non-local issues click, leadership also plays a role here.
The BSP won two seats in 2017, Aligarh and Meerut, thanks to a high Dalit and Muslim consolidation in its favour. It tried to play the same card this time as well by putting up 11 Muslim candidates. These urban areas have a decent slum population where the SC and minorities reside.
The population of the core voter (Yadavs) of SP is low in nagar nigams compared to nagar palikas and panchayats. Hence, Muslims may have voted tactically to defeat the BJP in 2017. But this time it didn’t work, with SP emerging as runner-up in 10 seats. The split of opposition votes also helped the BJP.
The BJP also led the charts in the Nagar Palika Parishad Adhyaksh seats followed by SP and BSP. SP was the number two choice and BSP number three choice of anti-BJP voters. Congress and BSP tally declined across the three tiers, in line with their performance in the Vidhan Sabha elections last year.
In Nagar Panchayat Adhyaksh seats, Independents led against the BJP, in a hyperlocal poll, as is normally the case, where candidate’s individual image and relationships matter a lot.
Almost a similar pattern was observed in the election of parshads / councillors and sadasya / members of nagar palika and panchayat. Essentially, as you move down from corporation to council to panchayat elections, BJP's share of seats decline due to semi-rural nature of bodies, hyper local polls, the Yadav population kicks in (core voter of SP).
The role of others / independents is very important in local bodies polls due to hyper local nature where image / reputation of candidate matters a lot. BJP has been attempting to make these polls also Presidential but is still getting there.
The tally of the BJP across tiers and categories of seats has been increasing over the years as shown in table below.
Economic Advantage For BJP Ahead Of 2024 LS Polls
In mayoral polls, nigam/panchayat adhyaksh elections, you need a person from the incumbent party to win to get resources/funds for development. This is where the triple engine narrative worked.
Rs 2,000 crore is roughly the budget for municipal corporations. The implementation of programmes could help the BJP create a new set of labharthis (beneficiaries) and win votes in the general elections next year. The opposition parties, which win the adhyaksha/ward member seats, also get budgets for development/implementing their programmes that could fetch them brownie points in future elections.
A word of caution, though, is that voters are increasingly differentiating between different elections.
The ULB results have established BJP as undisputed leader in UP, with SP as its principal opponent. BSP and Congress have not witnessed any revival per se.
The author is a political commentator and SEBI-registered investment advisor.
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