Gandhinagar, March 2 Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Tuesday said that the people of the state have wiped out the Congress and reduced it to a level where it is not even considered fit to be in the Opposition.
He was addressing the media at the state BJP headquarters in 'Shri Kamalam' here, where the party on Tuesday celebrated its impending victory in the local body elections.
As per the results received for all the municipalities till 6 p.m. on Tuesday, BJP captured 2,027 seats, followed by Congress (375), Independents (168), Aam Aadmi Party (9), Bahujan Samajwadi Party (6), and others (24).
In the district panchayat polls, 771 seats went to the BJP, 164 to the Congress, 3 to the independents, 2 to the AAP, 1 to the BSP and 4 to the others.
In the tehsil polls, 3,236 seats went to the BJP, 1,201 to the Congress, 112 to Independents, 31 to AAP, 4 to BSP and 16 to other candidates. The AAP has opened its account in the Junagadh Tehsil Panchayat.
"The Congress has been totally wiped out. Gujarati people have not even considered them worthy of selecting them as Opposition. They have secured very few seats as the people have rejected the party completely," Rupani said.
As the counting progressed for the local body elections in tehsil, district and municipalities in Gujarat on Tuesday, it became clear that the BJP has improved on its 2015 performance.
The Chief Minister said, "It was believed that even though the BJP might influence the urban voters, but the rural voters will stick to the Congress. But that too has been proven otherwise. The state president rightly said that the people have paid back to the BJP with interest."
He said that it looked like the BJP would form more than 60 municipality bodies this year.
( With inputs from IANS )
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