Bharatiya Janata Party's Anup Gupta was on Tuesday elected as Chandigarh's new Mayor defeating Aam Aadmi Party's Jasbir Singh Laddi by one vote in the mayoral polls held here on Tuesday.
While Gupta secured 15 votes, the AAP candidate got 14. A close fight was expected between the BJP and AAP after the Congress, which has six members and the Shiromani Akali Dal, which has a lone member, decided to abstain.
Both BJP and AAP have 14 councillors each in the House while Chandigarh's Member of Parliament, who at present is BJP's Kirron Kher, also has a vote being an ex-officio member of the municipal corporation House. Kher also cast her vote in the polls.
The municipal corporation of Chandigarh which has a tenure of 5 years has 35 members and the election for the post of Mayor takes place every year. Both BJP and AAP have 14 councillors each. However, BJP had one extra vote--that of Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher, who is an ex-officio member of the municipal corporation House. The Congress has six seats in the corporation while the SAD one. Both parties decided to abstain from voting, making it a straight contest between the BJP and AAP.
Interestingly, in the 2022 Mayoral elections too, the BJP won by one vote. This was the second instance in a row when both Congress and the Akali Dal abstained from voting.
In January last year, the mayoral elections had witnessed a massive uproar after the presiding officer declared one vote of the AAP invalid — out of the total 28 votes cast, BJP got 14 while AAP had 13. Later, in June, Congress councillor Gurcharan Jeet Singh joined the BJP, changing the voting equation for this year’s mayoral elections, giving an edge of one vote to the BJP over AAP.
Tuesday’s elections were conducted in the presence of the deputy commissioner Chandigarh Vinay Pratap Singh. Before the voting began the AAP councillors questioned why nominated councillors, who did not have any right to vote, were also present in the House, to which Singh said that there was no provision that barred them from witnessing the elections.
Gupta replaces BJP’s Sarabjit Kaur as Chandigarh mayor. The Mayor’ s tenure in Chandigarh is of one year only and is reserved for women, SC and general candidates on a rotation basis. While last year, the post was reserved for Women, this year, the general category candidates could contest for the poll.
Gupta was elected as a first-time councillor in the municipal corporation elections held in 2021. With declared assets of Rs 45 crore, he was the richest candidate in the fray. Last year, Gupta had been chosen as the deputy mayor of the city. The new mayor is a businessman and is the municipal councillor from Ward Number 11, which includes sectors 18, 19 and 21.
On its decision to abstain from voting, Congress consistently held that it had got a mandate only to sit in the Opposition and it was doing so. The sole Akali councillor Hardeep Singh, however, said that the BJP should have fielded a senior candidate for the post of the mayor but instead, they had chosen a relatively junior first-time councillor due to which he decided to not participate in the elections.
The two other posts-- Senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor-- also went to the kitty of BJP with victories by Kanwarjeet Singh Rana and Harjeet Singh.
Will improve door-to-door garbage collection, says new Mayor
After assuming the mayor's chair, Gupta said that he will improve door-to-door garbage collection in the city. "Like the previous mayor, my tenure will also be in the direction of development. The works of the previous Mayor will be carried forward, sanitation in Chandigarh will be further improved, parks will be further developed and maintained and village roads and sewerage system will be strengthened," he said.