Riding on the support of nominated councillors, the Congress retained the post of Mayor of Chandigarh, the election to which was held on Tuesday, with Poonam Sharma winnning by two votes defeating the BJP-SAD candidate. This is being seen as a big setback for the city BJP as it failed to win over the nominated coluncillors who have voting rights in its favour.
Despite having 14 votes of councillors and an MP, the BJP lost to the Congress which had only nine votes of councillors in the MC House. Poonam Sharma will replace Harphool Kalyan.
Poonam, who is a law graduate, contested the election for the very first time. She is a councillor from ward no-7. She defeated BJP-SAD candidate, Heera Negi. The post of Deputy Mayor was bagged by Congress candidate, Gurbax Rawat while Rajesh Gupta of BJP won as senior Deputy Mayor.
For Mayor’s election, 17 votes were polled in favour of Poonam Sharma and 15 for Negi. One vote was declared invalid. Out of 35 members, including BJP’s MP Kirron Kher, 33 members exercised their right to vote.
Out of nine nominated councillors, Sat Paul Bansal and Dr Amrit Tewari remained absent from the voting. While ailing Tewari is admitted to the PGI, Sat Paul Bansal is in Canada due to his prior business engagements.
High drama prevailed in the assembly hall, after Kirron, Member of Parliament from Chandigarh, folded her ballot paper twice while voting for Mayor. The congress councilors demanded that her vote should be canceled, as the ballot paper needs to be folded only once. Congress councillors said that folding a ballot paper twice is against the rules, hence her vote should be declared as invalid. However the demands were rejected and the vote was count as valid.
The Mayor’s post this year was reserved for a woman candidate. For Senior Deputy Mayor’s post, BJP’s Rajesh Gupta secured 17 votes, whereas Congress candidate Satish Kainth got 15 votes. One vote was declared invalid in Senior Deputy Mayor’s elections as well.
For Deputy Mayor’s post, Congress’s Gurbax Rawat defeated BJP’s Davesh Moudgil with a margin of one vote. Gurbax Rawat polled 16 votes, whereas BJP’s Davesh Moudgil got 15 votes. Two votes were declared invalid.
A blame game has started in BJP over defeat in the mayoral elections. Different camps of MP Kirron Kher, city unit president Sanjay Tandon, former MP Satya Pal Jain and senior BJP leader Harmohan Dhawan, have started blaming each other for the defeat.
Kher, said the Congress candidate has been able to grab the post of Mayor, with help of nominated councillors. “Chances are there of cross voting also in the elections,” she added.