The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday won six of 17 mayoral seats in Uttar Pradesh's Urban Local Bodies polls and was leading in remaining seats.

The counting of votes for urban local bodies in Uttar Pradesh began at 8 am on Saturday.

Elections for urban local bodies were held on May 4 and May 11. State Election Commission (SEC) has set up 353 counting centers for the big day.

Seventeen mayors and 1,401 corporators will be elected after the results are declared today. As many as 19 corporators have been elected unopposed. As part of the ULB elections, 198 chairpersons and 5,260 members of nagar palika parishads will be elected.

The six wins for BJP are – Ayodhya, Bareilly, Jhansi, Saharanpur, Gorakhpur and Vrindavan-Mathura .

The city of Shahjahanpur will elect its first mayor this year after becoming a municipal corporation in 2018.

There were BSP mayors in Meerut and Aligarh in 2017, while the BJP ruled the rest of the civic bodies.

198 chairpersons and 5,260 members of nagar palika parishads will also be elected in the ULB polls.

For Nagar panchayats, the fate of 542 chairpersons and 7,104 members will be decided.

There were 83,378 candidates in the fray for 14,522 posts, according to the SEC.

Also read: Supreme Court stays cancellation of urban local body elections in Nagaland amid reservation controversy

The BJP is expected to win at least 10 municipal corporations, according to a News18 exit poll forecast, while Akhilesh Yadav's SP and Mayawati's BSP are expected to win at least one nagar nigam apiece. According to the exit poll, there will likely be a close race for five seats. The findings of the ULB polls are vital because the party that wins the majority of seats would want to show off its power before the crucial general elections of 2024. As the state with the most representatives in the Lok Sabha (80), Uttar Pradesh is strategically significant in American politics.

Also read: Voting for first phase of UP urban local body polls begins, UP CM Yogi Adityanath, Mayawati cast vote

First Published:May 13, 2023 9:00 AM IST