'Development has triumphed': PM Modi on UP civic polls

Supporting his statement, party leader and former UP minister Azam Khan said the BJP won wherever EVMs were used and SP won wherever ballot papers were used. It won 70 posts of the Municipal (Nagar Palika) Parishad presidents as against Samajwadi Party's 45, BSP's 29 and Congress 9.

In the civic polls that concluded on Friday, the BJP won 14 of the 16 mayoral seats.

He also claimed that Congress had made a tremendous gain by securing ten percent more votes in the present elections then what they get in last polls still they were projected if they had lost all ground. Senior Congress leader Deepak Singh said at Lucknow that the results itself explain that the BJP's mandate in the urban local body elections had decreased, while the vote share of the Congress had gone up.

"We fought the urban local body polls in Uttar Pradesh on party symbol and I am happy to say that along with the Dalits, people belonging to backward castes, upper castes and minorities, especially Muslims, also voted for us in large numbers", she claimed.

According to the state election commission, the AAP has also managed to win three corporator seats in the urban body polls as well. Aam Adami Party spokesperson Sanjay Singh has also blamed the EVMs misuse behind the success of ruling party' victory.

Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday took to Twitter to show that the BJP has won only in areas where EVMs were used.

While in most places the BJP may have won, the margins, as compared to the February-March 2017 state assembly polls, have dwindled. In the 652 seats (mayors and chairpersons of nagar palika parishads and nagar panchayats), the BJP lost 470 seats... This is barely 28 per cent, which is less than the passing percentage of 33.

BJP's UP general secretary Vijay Pathak however launched a counter attack on the opposition saying instead of introspecting after the results, these parties were blaming EVMs for their poor performance. He said that the electorate of the state gave a befitting reply to the baseless allegations levelled by opposition parties. Mayawati-led BSP came second by winning the mayoral posts in western UP's Aligarh and Meerut towns. The party emerged victorious in only 922 of the 5,260 seats.