The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has all the reasons to cheer in Chandigarh. After a gap of 15 years, the BJP finally bagged the top post of the mayor of Chandigarh when Arun Sood, the joint candidate of the BJP-Akali Dal alliance, was elected on Friday.
Not only this, the ruling BJP made a clean sweep in the elections by winning all the three posts of mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor in the civic body.
BJP-SAD candidate Arun Sood was elected as mayor, Davesh Moudgil as senior deputy mayor and Hardeep Singh as deputy mayor.
Riding on the support of nominated councillors, Sood defeated his rival and Congress councillor Mukesh Bassi by a margin of six votes. Out of the total 36 votes polled, Sood got 21, while Bassi got 15 votes.
Sood, was also fielded by the BJP earlier in 2013 for the post of Mayor, but had lost the election to Congress candidate Subhash Chawla.
Meanwhile, BJP’s Davesh Moudgil got 23 votes while his rival Congress candidate Darshan Garg registered13 votes. likewise, Hardeep Singh defeated Congress candidate Gurbax Rawat by six votes to win the post of deputy mayor.
The results are seen as a major setback to the Congress which has failed to win even a single seat in the election.
The coveted post of the Chandigarh mayor has eluded the BJP for the past 15 years. The party has not won the mayoral elections since 2000 when BJP’s Shanta Hit Abhilashi was elected to the top post. In 2007, Harjinder Kaur of the SAD was elected mayor with the BJP and nominated councillors’ support.
The BJP had also given the city its first mayor, Kamla Sharma in the year 1997.
Although the party had a majority in the MC House, it had been struggling to win the coveted post due to infighting since past couple of years. last year, the Congress had won the mayor and deputy mayor post while BJP had managed to win post of senior deputy mayor.
The MCC house has a total of 36 members, comprising 26 elected, nine nominated councilors and Member of Parliament, who is ex-officio member having voting rights during the Mayoral elections here.
As far as the number game is concerned, the Congress has eight councillors, the BJP-SAD alliance 15 and the BSP two while one councillor is an independent. Apart from this, BJP had also got an additional vote of Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher.
The stakes were high for the BJP this time, as top BJP and Akali Dal leaders, including Health Minister JP Nadda, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar lal Khatter, Punjab chief Kamal Sharma had campaigned for BJP-SAD alliance candidates in the mayoral election. Also, Punjab Chief Minister and his Haryana counterpart had hosted separate tea parties for the councillors before the elections.
After winning the top post, newly elected mayor Arun Sood while talking to the mediapersons said, “My focus would be overall development of Chandigarh. During more than a decade rule of Congress in Municipal Corporation, the development was stalled in the city.”
Following party’s victory on all the three posts of Municipal Corporation, the BJP leaders said that Chandigarh city have become Congress free in real sense.
Notably, the outcome of the mayoral poll is likely to have an impact on the Municipal Corporation elections, scheduled to be held by the end of this year.
