The Bharatiya Janata Party’s councillor Ravi Kant Sharma was on Friday elected as the new mayor of Chandigarh.
With the BJP enjoying a majority in the Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh General House, all three top posts including mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor again went to the saffron party’s kitty.
Sharma defeated Congress mayoral nominee Devinder Singh Babla through a secret ballot in the MCC House. The BJP’s Maheshinder Singh Sidhu and Farmila were elected senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor, respectively.
The new mayor has replaced BJP’s Raj Bala Malik, who was elected on January 10 last year. While there was a threat of cross-voting in the BJP camp, Sharma got 17 of the 24 votes polled. Congress candidate Devinder Singh Babla got only five votes. Two votes were declared invalid. Sharma is a first-time councillor and was elected senior deputy mayor in 2020.
The BJP has the majority in the 27-member of the MC House with 20 councillors while the Congress has five councillors.
The BJP’s ally Shiromani Akali Dal also has one councillor — Hardeep Singh, who boycotted the election.
Chandigarh Member of Parliament Kirron Kher and councillor Heera Negi could not visit MCC to cast their vote due to health reasons.
In order to be elected as Mayor, a nominee needs 14 votes of the elected councillors. The Chandigarh mayor holds a one-year term. This year, the mayor post was open for candidates from the general category. Soon after the mayor’s election, the Congress boycotted the elections of the senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor alleging malpractices in the polls.
Chandigarh Congress chief Pardeep Chhabra and party councillors alleged that the UT Administration and MCC officials who had declared that no cameras or phones will be allowed during the electoral process, became mute spectators when photographs were clicked during the electoral process. The presiding officer behaved in a biased manner, they added.
Notably, the BJP had faced major embarrassment earlier this week when rebel councillor Chandrawati Shukla had filed her nomination for mayor’s post as an independent candidate. Another party councillor Bharat Kumar had announced to resign after the declaration of candidates by the saffron party for mayoral polls.
However, Chandrawati Shukla’s nomination was rejected and the BJP has managed to retain all three top posts in MCC. This is the ruling BJP’s fifth consecutive win in mayoral polls in the present Municipal Corporation House, which goes to the polls by the end of this year.
The BJP has in the past few years witnessed revolt within the party during mayoral polls.
In the 2020 mayoral polls, when Raj Bala Malik was nominated by BJP, another councillor Heera Negi had criticised the move openly while in 2019 mayoral polls, rebel councillor Satish Kainth had filed papers against the party’s official choice, Rajesh Kalia, and gave him a tough fight, losing by just three votes. Kainth had later joined the Congress before Lok Sabha elections.
In 2018, the then outgoing mayor Asha Jaswal had rebelled against BJP candidate Davesh Moudgil, although she later withdrew her nomination.
