Chandigarh: Three Aam Aadmi Party councillors who had jumped ship helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win elections to posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor today, March 4.
Fresh polls to these posts were necessitated after the Supreme Court on February 20 overturned the results of the January 30 Chandigarh mayoral polls – which had been fraudulently decided in favour of the BJP candidate – and declared the AAP-Congress joint candidate Kuldeep Kumar the validly elected city mayor.
The beleaguered Congress-AAP alliance, which fought a legal battle in the SC to wrest the mayor’s post from the BJP’s grasp, was heavily relying on the defected AAP councillors to return the party fold to win the remaining two posts.
AAP, sources said, made attempts to win them over but they remained incommunicado and stayed with BJP, finally paving the way for the victory of their candidates.
Reacting to the development, AAP Chandigarh leader Prem Garg told The Wire that AAP-Congress alliance had been poised to win these seats and would have done so if the BJP-appointed presiding officer Anil Masih had not engineered blatant rigging during January 30 mayoral polls.
Also read: Chandigarh Mayor Election: Presiding Officer Admits Marking Ballots, CJI Says He Must Be Prosecuted
He said that BJP has no moral right to celebrate their victory in these seats since they won it because of horse trading and unfair means.
The election was held under chairmanship of AAP-Congress mayor Kuldeep Kumar, who carefully supervised each and every vote cast. Voting was held separately for both these posts amid tight security.
In the final results, BJP’s Kuldeep Singh Sandhu defeated AAP-Congress candidate Gurpreet Singh Gabi by three votes (19-16) for the post of senior deputy mayor.
The deputy mayor’s post was sealed by BJP candidate Rajinder Sharma against opposition candidate Nirmala Devi as he polled 19 votes against 17 by Nirmala.
BJP, whose original strength was 14 against AAP-Congress’s 20 in 35-member MC house managed to secure 19 votes due to the support of the three defected councillors. It also had the vote from a councillor originally from BJP’s former ally Shiromani Akali Dal and that of the Chandigarh BJP MP, Kirron Kher, who is ex-officio member of the MC house.
The elections to these posts were originally scheduled for February 27 but the mayor skipped it citing personal reasons, even as BJP criticised him for this move. Later the local administration notified a fresh date, March 4.
What happens to the AAP mayor now?
After the election, Chandigarh MC body is left a fractured body. While the mayor belongs to the AAP-Congress alliance, two of his immediate juniors belong to the BJP now.
While AAP claims that this would not hamper the working of the mayor’s office since more power is rested with the mayor under the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation Act, BJP through his deputies may still attempt to sabotage agendas and other daily businesses of the MC office.
Moreover, BJP also enjoys more strength against its counterparts in MC house, making it easy to pass or reject any agenda to be tabled by the AAP-Congress mayor.
However, the immediate concern for both the parties is to win the upcoming Lok Sabha election. The Chandigarh parliamentary seat will have a Congress candidate as per the last month’s pact between Congress and AAP.
