Dhanbad: After the completion of the first round of counting of votes for the Dhanbad Municipal Corporation on the Polytechnic College campus on Friday, rebel BJP candidate Sanjeev Singh surged ahead, setting the tone for a closely watched mayoral contest.Singh secured 15,791 votes in the first round, while former mayor Chandrashekhar Agarwal, who left the BJP and joined the JMM, was second with 10,524 votes. BJP-backed candidate Sanjeev Kumar was placed third with 8,645 votes. The early lead gained by Singh triggered celebrations among his supporters, who gathered in large numbers at the camps set up on the college premises.The vote count figures were officially released by Vinod Kumar, returning officer (mayor) and additional collector, with the permission of general observer Robin Toppo.As per the first round of counting, other mayoral candidates received the following votes: Amit Kumar Agarwal (671), Akash Dusadh (378), Indu Devi (2,084), Umesh Paswan (430), Kusum Devi (502), Javed Iqbal (470), Dilip Kumar (358), Deenanath Thakur (336), Nawal Kishore Paswan (332), Md Parvez Khan (379), Prakash Kumar (1,516), Binod Kumar Singh (371), Bhrigu Nath Bhagat (378), Mukesh Kumar Pandey (257), Yogendra Pradhan (157), Ravi Chaudhary (728), Ravi Bundela (528), Rajkumar Kanaujia (190), Ram Vinay Singh (265), Rahul Kumar Chauhan (507), Md Rustam Ansari (308), Laxmi Devi (443), Shamsher Alam Ansari (4,173), Shantanu Kumar Chandra (486), Shilpi Sharma (200), and K C Sinhraj (313).In the first round, a total of 55,700 votes were counted, out of which 3,980 were rejected.In Chirkunda Nagar Panchayat, Sunita Devi clinched victory for the post of chairperson. She defeated her nearest rival, Shukla Rai, by a margin of 1,059 votes, securing a decisive mandate.
