After its embarrassing defeat in Chandigarh Mayor election, BJP has finally seen some light at the end of the dark future in Chandigarh by winning the post of senior deputy mayor against Aam Aadmi Party and Congress’s collaboration as INDIA Alliance in the repoll held on Monday.
Kuljeet Sandhu a prominent member of BJP defeated Alliance member Gurpreeet Singh Gabi with a close margin of 3 votes only. Even after the invalidation of 1 one Kuljeet Sandhu was able to secure 19 votes meanwhile Gurpreet Singh Gabhi was able to collect 16 votes.
The polling started at 10:26 am with Kiran Kher casting as the first voter.
On 30th January, Manoj Sonkar, BJP’s mayoral candidate, after being declared as mayor, announced Sandhu and Sharma as senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor, respectively but the decision was canceled out by the supreme court and Kuldeep Kumar was selected as the mayor of Chandigarh Municipal Council. Mr. Kumar presided over the election for which nominations and repoling were filed afresh and the parties filed same candidates as to their previous nominations.
Now before the Supreme Court declared Kuldeep Kumar as the Mayor of Chandigarh, BJP managed to successfully switch three of the AAp councilors to their side, which strengthened their number to 36 members house.
Kiran Kher who is also an ex-member of the house also voted in favor of BJP which led to a total votes of 19 and put BJP in the lead against the 17 votes of Alliance.
AAP and congress announced their alliance in the mayoral poll to defeat BJP. The plan was to put AAP’s member as the mayor of the city while congress would put up its candidates for the position of Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy mayor.
It is a crucial win for BJP after the backlash they faced for the court verdict on February 20.
Although a minor feud over the selection of officers to assist the Mayor with the election did happen just before the initialization of the voting but was put to rest by the secretary of MC clarifying that it is a right of the Mayor to choose the officer to assist him as per the rules and regulations.
Even during this election one vote was invalidated by the Mayor. Although it is not clear which party’s vote was invalidated, it seems that the vote belonged to the INDIA block. Which makes it clear that BJP was afraid of the election even after securing 3 members from the opposition party
During the previous voting Anil Masih- a nominated councilor and who was also the presiding officer during the voting, defaced 8 votes of the Alliance declaring them invalid. Due to which BJP’s Manoj Sonkar became the mayor Chandigarh, However, supreme court found that those “invalid” voted to be valid and also in favor of Kuldeep Kumar. Hence, Supreme court banished the previous ruling and stated Kuldeep Kumar as the new Mayor of Chandigarh.
