Panchkula, May 14 -- In a double delight for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it stormed into the Panchkula municipal corporation (MC) House with 17 councillors while its mayoral candidate Shyam Lal Bansal registered a thumping victory with 68,544 votes. The House has 20 seats.

Bansal defeated Sudha Bhardwaj of the Congress by a whopping 36,252 votes. The Congress leader had polled 32,292 votes.

The win comes as a boost to the saffron party, which is already in power at the Centre and state, and has been promising a triple-engine thrust in development. Locally too, it's a shot in the arm for the party, which had nine councillors and a mayor in the outgoing House. With the latest win, it has come back stronger as its rivals could only m...