(This story originally appeared in on Nov 30, 2017)

LUCKNOW: An exit poll conducted over the three phases of municipal elections in Uttar Pradesh has predicted a clean sweep for the ruling BJP , giving it 15 out of 16 mayoral seats in the state.e, including the newly created municipal corporations of Ayodhya-Faizabad, Mathura-Vrindavan and Saharanpur, with anything between 34% and 52% of the votes. In the previous civic polls in 2012, the saffron party had won 11out 13 seats.In both Varanasi and Gorakhpur, the Lok Sabha seat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the home turf of chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi respectively, the party is shown to be getting 45% of votes. In Ayodhya, from where the CM started campaigning for the polls, BJP is shown leading with 48% of the votes while the grand old party Congress is down to a minuscule 2%. Congress, which was hoping for a revival in the state and was pitching this election as a precursor to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, is shown in the survey to be coming fourth, behind SP, BSP and BJP, in nine seats which include Saharanpur, Meerut, Firozabad, Aligarh, Agra , Allahabad, Gorakhpur and Kanpur.In five nagar nigams, the party is shown getting less than 10% of the votes for mayor which includes Ayodhya with 2% of the votes, Meerut with 9%, Firozabad with 7%, Aligarh with 3% and Agra with 4% of the votes.According to the survey, SP, the only other party shown winning a mayoral seat, has ended up behind BJP in eight seats which includes its strongholds of Moradabad, Bareilly and Aligarh. In Meerut, SP is shown third behind even BSP and may get just 16% of the votes. The survey has placed BSP second in six seats with a vote share of between 3% and 27%.