UP: 140 Women to lead urban local bodies

LUCKNOW, Uttar Pradesh: In a major boost to empower women, the Government of Uttar Pradesh has appointed 140 women leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to chair urban local bodies in different districts.

In this year’s municipal corporation elections, six are women BJP mayors out of 17 elected. Apart from this, BJP female workers have also been elected to 44 municipalities and 90 panchayats.     

One of the BJP leaders said that the dream of the government of Uttar Pradesh is to accomplish half of the women population to take part in the assembly, or the civic bodies elections- to make ‘Mission Shakti’ successful.

BJP mayor candidate Sushma Kharwal of Lucknow got maximum votes of more than five lakh whereas Sunita Dayal of Ghaziabad defeated a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate with the highest margin of 2.87 lakh votes.  Hemlata Diwakar from Agra, Kamini Rathore from Firozabad, Pramila Pandey from Kanpur, Sunita Dayal from Ghaziabad, and Archana Verma from Shahjahanpur have got the distinction of becoming the first citizens of their cities, to hold the position of mayors.

BJP candidate Hemlata Diwakar defeated BSP by more than 1.08 lakh votes, which is the biggest victory so far from Agra. Pramila Pandey from Kanpur won with over 1.77 lakh votes while Archana Verma from Shahjahanpur and Kamini Rathore from Firozabad won with 30,000 and 26,000 votes respectively.

The BJP has also won 88 of 198 municipal council president’s seats of which 44 have been appointed to female candidates.  It includes one each from Amethi, Amroha, Unnao, Kannauj, Kushinagar, Kanpur Dehat, Kasganj, Kaushambi, Ghazipur, Gonda, Noida, Jalaun, Jaunpur, Jhansi, Deoria, Fatehpur, Balrampur, Bahraich, Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar, Mainpuri, Rampur, Lalitpur, Bijnor, Sonbhadra, two each from Hathras, Etah, Pilibhit, Firozabad, Bareilly, Sitapur, and Banda as well as three each from Badaun and Bulandshahr.

There are 544 nagar panchayat seats in the state of which results were declared for 543 with BJP winning 191 seats. 90 BJP women have been elected as Nagar Panchayat Chairperson.