The Bharatiya Janata Party has done it again. The party has once again proved itself by winning in all the four municipal corporations, which went to the polls in Madhya Pradesh on January 31.

The best victory by far was in Indore, where the party’s candidate for the post of Mayor Malini Gaur romped home with a margin of 2.47 lakh votes. She polled 6,20,083 votes as against 3,73,487 votes got by the runner up - Congress’s Archana Jaiswal.

In Bhopal, the party’s candidate for the post of Mayor, Alok Sharma, beat his nearest rival, Congress’s Kailash Mishra by a margin of 86,000 votes. Mr. Sharma got 4.42 lakh votes and Mr. Mishra 3.56 lakh votes.

In the other two municipal corporations of Jabalpur and Chindwara, the BJP’s Mayoral candidates won by margins of 87,000 and 9,600 votes respectively. For Chindwara, it was its first election after being upgraded to a municipal corporation.

Municipalities

Elections were also held for five municipalities and of them BJP bagged three – Badoni in Dhatiya district, Patera in Damoh district and Chapiheda in Rajgad district. Congress won the remaining two – Bankhedi in Hoshangabad district and Shamshabad in Vidisha district.

State BJP President, Nandkumar Singh Chouhan, ascribed the victory to the hard work of the party workers and also the development works that have been undertaken over the past 10 years under the leadership of the Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The victories is expected to further strengthen the position of the Chief Minister in the party. Ever since Narendra Modi took over the reins at the Centre, there has been speculations that Mr. Chouhan could also go to the Centre. The impact of the new victories remains to be seen.