Cong grabs Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation

Ahmadabad: In a setback to chief minister Narendra Modi, the Congress gave itself a major boost by winning the first-ever elections to Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation on Thursday. The victory for the Congress came on the eve of the 180th birth anniversary of BJP-controlled Ahmadabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).The ruling BJP in the state looked all set to capture the civic body in the state capital, but a dramatic turn of events saw the opposition party winning the polls. In the end, the Congress won 18 seats, while the saffron party won the remaining 15 seats in the 33-seat newly formed civic body. With this win, the Congress gets to rule two corporations — Gandhinagr and Junagadh. The other six — Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar — are with the BJP.The counting of votes began at 9:00 am at Government Secondary School in Sector 16 of Gandhinagar amid tight security to decide the fate of the 11 candidates who had contested in the elections to 33 seats of 11 wards.The BJP established an early lead by surging ahead in most of the seats. Within some time, the BJP had won four seats, with the Congress bagging a single seat. The BJP continued to lead, but the Congress stayed in the contest. The BJP tally rose to 15 — just two seats away from the majority — while the Congress was stuck in single digits.However, in a dramatic turn of events, the Congress came back strongly to take its tally to 15. The poll outcome could have gone either side as both parties were tied with 15 seats each, and only the results of ward no. 4 remaining.