Gujarat local body polls: We must analyse setback in rural areas, says Anandiben Patel

Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel on Wednesday said the BJP will have to analyse the reasons for its poor performance in the local body polls in the rural areas of the state.

"Though we have done well in municipal corporations and municipalities, it is also a fact that the results in district and taluka panchayat bodies are not up to the expectations," Patel admitted while addressing the party workers outside BJP office in Khanpur area here.

"We have been doing several developmental works across Gujarat. We have also undertaken an exercise to strengthen the party organisation. Still we have to now analyse what went wrong. We will find out and address these problems," she said.

The Chief Minister received a grand welcome at Khanpur office as the BJP has retained the six municipal corporations: Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, Surat, Jamnagar, Vadodara and Rajkot.

The Chief Minister, though, expressed some disappointment for not surpassing the previous tally of 151 at the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

"We have won in all the six corporations with a thumping majority... Of the 56 municipalities, we have captured 40 while eight went to Congress. People used to say that BJP will get only 80 to 90 seats in AMC (of the total 192), but we have captured 142," Patel said.

"In the last election we won 151 seats. I wished we would surpass that, but we could not. This is not a big issue. Some seats sway here and there. Overall we have done well in all the six corporations," she said.

Though the counting is not yet over, Congress was leading in 18 of the 31 district panchayats. In 230 taluka panchayats with a total of 4,778 seats, it was leading in 2,204 while BJP was ahead in 1,798 seats.