NEW DELHI: In a shot in the arm for the BJP before the Gujarat elections, the party swept the civic elections in Uttar Pradesh on Friday with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath passing his first test with flying colours. BJP won 14 out of 16 Mayor posts of Municipal Corporations (Nagar Nigams) while Samajwadi Party and Congress failed to open their account. Mayawati ’s Bahujan Samaj Party ( BSP ) however did make a mini comeback.BSP, which contested the elections for the first time on its symbol, won two out of the 16 Nagar Nigam Mayor posts — in Aligarh and Meerut in Western UP, which has considerable Muslim population. UP Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya blamed these losses on “certain equations” in these two seats. Samajwadi Party (SP) failed to win even in its stronghold Firozabad, ending in third position there. BJP won big in most areas, including the newly-formed Nagar Nigams in Ayodhya and Mathura, along with Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Lucknow. However, BJP was not able to perform in similar manner in the simaltaneous elections to 198 Nagar Parishads and 498 Nagar Panchayats. BJP could win only 68 out of the 198 Nagar Parishad top posts and just 100 out of 438 Nagar Panchayat top posts. SP won 45 and 83 such posts respectively. BJP however won the Amethi Nagar Panchayat post in Rahul Gandhi’s constituency while the Congress clarified that it had not fielded its candidate for the said contest.Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on the win. “This victory is significant in many ways. These results will have an impact all across the country. The propaganda of the opposition has been exposed. Traders in cities have approved the GST,” the PM said in an address to BJP’s woman workers in Gujarat on Friday. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said BJP has won over 3/4th of the Nagar Nigam seats. In the last civic elections too, BJP did well — winning 10 out of the 12 Nagar Nigams that existed then.BJP however believes the present win will help it in Gujarat. “The pleasant wave and smell of this massive UP win will travel to Gujarat too,” UP BJP president Mahendra Nath Pandey told ET. “This win is an eye-opener for those who say big things in Gujarat - they could not open their account in UP civil polls and have been defeated even in Amethi. Rahul Gandhi should now think about his political future. This win is also a reaffirmation of people’s faith in government’s steps like GST and demonetisation,” Adityanath said in Lucknow. Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya called it a hattrick of wins for the Party after the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and Assembly elections in 2017. “If the BJP had proven to perform badly in these elections, the opposition would have made a big deal out of it in Gujarat polls,” Maurya said.SP however questioned why BJP had not been able to sweep the Nagar Parishad and Nagar Panchayat polls which were conducted on paper ballots rather than EVMs in the case of Nagar Nigams. “There are many questions over the EVMs now. How come so many independents have won in the two elections held on paper ballots?” SP leader Rajesh Mehrotra told ET. While BJP won 68 out of the top posts in Nagar Parishads, SP won 45, BSP won 29 and 43 posts were won by Independents. In top posts to 438 Nagar Panchayats, BJP won only 100 contests, SP won 83 and BSP won 45 posts. Independents won 181 such posts. “Whenever SP loses, it finds fault with the EVMs,” Maurya said. BJP lost 5 out of the 6 Panchayat posts in his stronghold of Kaushambi.16 Nagar NigamsBJP: 14 (Ayodhya, Mathura, Lucknow, Kanpur, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Varanasi, Firozabad, Jhansi, Agra, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Bareli and Ghaziabad)BSP: 2 (Meerut and Aligarh)Samajwadi Party: 0Congress: 0198 Nagar Palika ParishadsBJP: 68BSP: 29Samajwadi Party: 45Congress: 9Independents: 43Others: 1(3 results were awaited)438 Nagar PanchayatsBJP: 100BSP: 45Samajwadi Party: 83Congress: 17Independents: 181Others: 11(1 result was awaited)