Uttar Pradesh civic polls 2017: Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party is the surprise package

Mayawati's BSP is the only party to offer some resistance to the BJP juggernaut in the civic polls.

Mayawati's BSP ran a low-key campaign for the local body elections.

NEW DELHI: The surprise package in today’s civic poll results from Uttar Pardesh seems to be Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). After failing to win a single parliamentary seat in 2014, the BSP slumped to just 19 MLAs in the current state Assembly, its lowest since 1991. 

After a high-powered campaign which saw Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath hold rallies in each of the 16 mayoral towns, the BJP was widely expected to come out on top in these local body elections. But not many would have predicted a second place finish for Mayawati’s party, considering it barely made a dent seven months ago. 

The BSP will have a mayor in Aligarh and is neck-and-neck with the BJP in Jhansi and Meerut. The party may end up finishing second in most of the municipal areas that went to the hustings. The party’s campaign was low-key compared to BJP’s campaign, in which the Chief Minister and senior members of his cabinet campaigned in person. 

This is the first time Mayawati’s party has contested the local body elections in Uttar Pradesh on the party symbol. The party is doing well in areas with its traditional Dalit voter bases - Budelkhand and Western Uttar Pradesh - and looks set to win in a 100 of the 652 local bodies that went to the polls.

In 2012, the BJP had won 10 of 12 municipal corporations, one each were won by independents backed by the SP or BSP. There are four new municipalities that will have a mayor this year - Ayodhya-Faizabad, Saharanpur, Firozabad and Mahtura - and all seem to be going with the BJP.