At a felicitation programme organised at BJP headquarters here, party president Nitin Gadkari hailed the performance of the Uttar Pradesh unit. BJP had won ten of the 12 mayoral seats for which elections were held recently.
This has come as a shot in the arm for the party which was down in the dumps after its dismissal performance in the Assembly elections.
"We have won ten of the 12 mayoral seats in UP. Our Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma has won for the second time and with a margin of 1.7 Lakh votes which should get him a place in Limca Book of Records," Gadkari said, adding that the vote percentage of BJP in the UP local bodies polls had gone up while that of the Congress had fallen since the Assembly polls.
The BJP President also noted that party candidate Saroj Pathak had won the seat of Chairperson, Kannauj Municipal Council by more than 8,000 votes. Kannauj is the bastion of the ruling Samajwadi Party.
"Winning these elections was a tough task for us. Samajwadi Party was tacitly supporting some candidates fighting against us and so was the BSP. These two parties only did not contest on their party symbol," Gadkari said.
Crediting these positive results with providing a "new wave of energy and enthusiasm" in the party, the BJP President appealed to the leaders to work unitedly and increase manifold the membership of the party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. (MORE)