Panchkula, May 14 -- In a double delight for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it secured 17 out of the 20 seats in the Panchkulamunicipal corporation (MC) House while its mayoralcandidate Shyam Lal Bansal registered a thumping victory with 68,544 votes polled in his favour. He defeated Sudha Bhardwaj of the Congress by a whopping 36,252 votes. Bhardwaj got 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 beenpromising 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 manage three seats this time - Congress one and Independents two. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was making its debut in the civic body elections in Haryana, and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), which has historically been viewed as a strong regional party in the state, failed to win any seats. In the mayoral race, the INLD nominee Manoj Aggarwal got just 3,465 votes while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Rajesh Kumar secured 2,759 votes. Independent candidates Karnail Singh Bangar and Chaudhary Chandan Singh got 1,188 and 1,051 votes respectively, less than the votes polled in favour of none of the above (NOTA), which stood at 1,444. In all, 1,10,702 out of 2,07,444 eligible voters, had turned up to exercise their franchise in Sunday's elections. While the BJP supporters continued celebrations throughout the day, the opposition parties, led by the Congress and INLD, alleged foul play as soon as the early trends came in. Bhardwaj left the counting station around 11.30 am, even before the results for wards 1 to 10 were announced, stating that there were irregularities. She alleged that the strongroom had been breached in the run up to the counting, and a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera installed there had been non-functional for nearly an hour and a half. "The government and the administration are hand-in-glove with each other. The victory margin appears to have been pre-decided. Democracy has been completely undermined," she said. Her counterparts in the INLD and AAP also echoed similar sentiments. Responding to the allegations, Bansal said, "The Congress is a divided house. There is acute factionalism in the party. Their allegations of rigging reflect their own mindset. Their senior leaders did not hold any major public meetings in Panchkula, and many of their leaders are not even willing to work together." He added, "Hard work always brings results. We organised around 40 public meetings across different wards, where all our senior leaders remained present. Personally, I addressed nearly 200 public meetings during the campaign." In the run-up to the elections, the saffron party had left no stone unturned to wrest the seat. It had roped in star campaigners, ranging from Lok Sabha MP Manoj Tiwari and Haryanavi singer Masoom Sharma to address the rallies. Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini had himself addressed multiple rallies. The party had also managed to pacify its rebels in time, therefore avoiding a dent in its vote bank. Three of its leaders - Ritu Goyal, the councillor of Ward 3, Sonia Sood of Ward 4, and Sushil Garg of Ward 14 - had filed papers as Independents after being denied party tickets. They withdrew their nominations after meeting the CM. The Congress on the other hand had suffered a jolt just weeks before the elections as former Panchkula mayor Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia joined the BJP after being served a show-cause notice for anti-partyactivities. After her departure, Panchkula Congress president Sanjay Chauhan had accepted Kaur was a strong leader and her exit will certainly cause some loss. BJP retains Ambala mayor's seat >P2 'Triple-engine' push, campaign blitz power BJP to resounding win >p2...