After a high-drama voting process, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sunder Singh won the last vacant seat of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) standing committee.- the civic body’s highest decision-making body. With this poll result, the BJP now has 10 of its 18 members in the panel while the ruling AAP has only eight.

Singh secured 115 votes while in the absence of

party councillors, AAP’s candidate Nirmala Kumari did not receive any vote. Singh has been elected as the sixth member in the Standing Committee from the House.

The elections for the last seat of the MCD standing committee were held when the post fell vacant after BJP councillor Kamaljeet Sehrawat was elected as the Lok Sabha MP from West Delhi in the general elections earlier this year. The Congress which has eight councilors, boycotted the election

This was the first time that the election was held without the participation of AAP and Congress councillors. Singh’s win — which will is most likely to be challenged in court means the BJP now has control over the Standing Committee, which is widely seen as the real power behind the municipal body.

The AAP has 125 councillors and, had the party voted today (and providing none of its votes were poached by the BJP), it would most likely have won the election, and control of the Standing Committee, which takes most of the municipal body’s financial decisions.

The polling was held in the presence of Additional Commissioner Jitendra Yadav, who was made the Presiding Officer in the absence of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

The election to the last vacant seat began earlier on Friday as per MCD Commissioner Ashwani Kumar’s order issued upon Lieutenant-Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena’s directions late Thursday.

Following the election, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said the party has a majority in the Standing Committee and wants to complete all essential tasks immediately. Sachdeva slammed the AAP for boycotting the election and said, “If the AAP had participated, Delhi would have realised today that the party had lost the majority in the corporation. If they had the majority, Kejriwal would not have avoided the election.” As soon as the results were announced, celebrations broke out in the House and BJP councillors started raising slogans like “Bharat Mata ki Jai”.

Former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal hit out at the BJP (BJP) after its candidate won the last vacant seat of the MCD standing committee. “According to rules only the mayor can convene a meeting of the MCD House but the lieutenant governor changed it and directed an additional commissioner of the civic body to do it,” Kejriwal said in the Delhi assembly.

 Kejriwal alleged that the BJP has wrongly overpowered the MCD and stole the mandate, and said the saffron party won the last vacant seat of the civic body’s standing committee. “Is this election?” he posed and accused the BJP of resorting to “hooliganism”. The former Chief Minister claimed that as per the rule, a notice has to be sent to every councillor 72 hours before the meeting, but it was not followed.

The AAP supremo said it was clearly written in the MCD law that only the Mayor has the right to call for the House sitting and when it meets, the Mayor will lead it. Neither the Lieutenant Governor nor the MCD Commissioner can call a sitting of the civic body’s House, he said, adding that whenever a sitting of the MCD House convened, 72 hours would be given for it. “There seems to be a flaw in their intentions. There seems to be a conspiracy to do some wrong in the elections. That is why they are engaged in conducting the elections by any means,” the AAP chief said.

Ahead of the polls, former deputy CM Manish Sisodia and Mayor Shelly Oberoi called LG’s orders “unconstitutional” and said the AAP councillors will only participate in the polls on October 5, as officially stated in Thursday’s MCD session.

Following disruption over frisking of the councillors on Thursday, the election to the MCD Standing Committee was postponed till October 5 by Mayor Shelly Oberoi. Later Lt Governor VK Saxena, however, overturned the postponement of the elections and directed MCD Commissioner Ashwani Kumar to hold the election on Friday at 1 pm.

Addressing a press conference on Friday, senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia and MCD Mayor Shelly Oberoi accused the BJP and the municipal commissioner of making a mockery of democracy and the constitution. Sisodia alleged that the commissioner issued an order late Thursday, directing the election to be conducted with an additional commissioner as the presiding officer.

“The BJP is attempting to repeat what it did in the Chandigarh mayoral poll, where it was caught red handed,” he said. As per rules, only the Mayor, deputy Mayor or a senior councillor can preside over the meeting of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) House. The Mayor has already announced the House meeting and election of the standing committee member for October 5, he said.

Just an hour ahead of the poll to elect the last vacant standing committee seat, Mayor Shelly Oberoi directed MCD Commissioner Ashwini Kumar to stall the election on Friday so that it could be held on October 5, as per her earlier instructions.

In a letter, Oberoi asked the commissioner to ensure due legal compliance in holding the standing committee election on October 5.  She also asked him to declare the poll scheduled for Friday to be “illegal and unlawful”.

 Oberoi, in her response to the commissioner, termed the LG’s directive unconstitutional. “This order is illegal, unconstitutional as it is a gross violation of the statutory scheme of the DMC Act and the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Procedure & Conduct of Business) Regulations, 1958, apart from being contrary to the touchstone of a fair democratic process,” she wrote.

 She further stressed that many councillors had informed her they were out of town after the adjournment of the House. “When your order was issued at 11 pm on 26.9.2024, there was inadequate time for them to reach for the said meeting.

“In fact, most councillors have not even received the meeting notice by 10 am on 27.09.2024. Therefore, to expect them to attend the meeting at such short notice is not only a violation of their electoral rights as public representatives but also violates the fair democratic process and Principles of Natural Justice,” she added.

 Declaring the commissioner’s order “ab initio null and void,” Oberoi reiterated her authority as Mayor to adjourn meetings.