Agra: Bhartiya Janata Party state leadership is stunned and numb at the dismally low percentage of votes polled for the Municipal Corporation election held on Thursday.

"Just 37 percent this time! last time it was 45 percent in Agra. The BJP election managers are finding it hard to explain how and why there has been such shocking disenchantment with the local election," a local BJP leader Nandan Shrotriya said.

The voting percentage in Mathura was 40 percent while in the neighboring city of Firozabad, it was 50 plus.

"In Agra, the campaign was well managed, the issues were clear, and the track record of the mayor Navin Jain and his team was generally appreciated in terms of the developmental projects executed. The weather gods were kind, but why the voters chose to express apathy and indifference, is not clear and the local leaders are still discussing the implications of the low voting percentage on the final outcome," said a BJP activist Jugal Kishor.

The BJP has been in power since 1989 and has been running the corporation without any major political threat from the opposition parties. But this time, signals are that the Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Dr. Lata Balmiki could give the BJP a run for its money. "We have some information that the Samajwadi Party has transferred its votes to the BSP candidate and that makes the election contest a tough ball game for the BJP which was brimming with overconfidence," a political observer Chaturbhuj Tiwari said.

The Agra Municipal Corporation has 100 corporators. Independent observers hinted that the BJP could be in for a shocker this time from the Bahujan Samaj Party which has tacit support from the Congress and the Samajwadi Party. The Aam Admi Party mayoral candidate Sunita Diwakar said her party stood a very good chance of winning a number of seats.

A week before the elections, local BJP leaders had sounded the state party functionaries of the dissidence and anger that was brewing because of the ticket distribution. "Wrong people had been given the tickets. This resulted in a large number of rebels entering the fray. To compound the issue further there were complaints from most booths of faulty electoral lists, thousands of voters could not vote as their names were missing from the lists," political worker Jagan Prasad said.

Social activist Padmini Iyer said the BJP had disappointed the voters. The continued neglect of environmental issues notably the sad state of Yamuna, had angered the large number of voters and even BJP supporters who chose to stay at home.

The counting is on May 13. "The prospects don't seem too happy for the ruling BJP but you never can guess what the final outcome would be as voters are too intelligent," says environmentalist Devashish Bhattacharya.