In what was being dubbed as Yogi Adityanath’s first electoral test after he became the chief minister, the BJP bagged several prestigious mayoral seats including Ayodhya, Varanasi, Lucknow, Gorakhpur and was leading in several others.In Ayodhya, BJP’s Rishikesh Upadhyay secured 44,642 votes and defeated nearest rival SP’s Gulshan Bindu, a transgender, by 3,601 votes.

In Prime Minister Narendra Modi Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi, BJP candidate Mridula Jaiswal defeating her nearest opponent, Shalini of the Congress, by a comfortable margin of 78,843 votes.In Lucknow, BJP’s Sanyukta Bhatia became the first woman mayor of the state capital defeating nearest rival, Samajwadi Party’s Meera Vardhan, by a huge margin of 1,31,356 votes.

In Gorakhpur, the home turf of Chief Minister Adityanath, BJP candidate Sitaram Jaiswal defeated Rahul Gupta of SP by 75,823 votes.In western UP’s Moradabad, BJP candidate Vinod Agarwal edged past Congress’s Rizvan Qureishi by a margin of 22,635 votes.

In Saharanpur too BJP candidate Madan Walia fended off the challenge from BSP rival Fazlurehman to win by 2,000 votes.The saffron party’s Mukesh won the Mathura-Vrindavan seat defeating nearest rival Mohan Singh of Congress by 22,108 votes.