After the State High Court set the ball rolling for the long-delayed urban local body (ULB) election, the principal political parties Congress and BJP have plunged into the election mode.
The Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Pritam Singh convened a meeting of the senior party leaders on Saturday and they all brainstormed on the party’s strategy.
Meanwhile, the Uttarakhand unit of BJP has conducted an internal survey and it is believed that the party would declare its candidates once the elections are formally announced on the basis of their winning capability.
According to the insiders, while BJP would try to cash on the success of Investors Summit, image of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and development works initiated by the Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat the Congress, on the other hand, would try to corner BJP on the issue of development.
The Congress leaders would also try to implicate BJP for the delay in these elections.
The State election commission is expected to issue notification of elections of 86 ULBs in Uttarakhand on October 15.
After the notification, the district magistrates would issue notification for elections in their respective districts. It is believed that the ULB elections would be held on November 15. In Dehradun, it is now clear that the elections would be held on the basis of the new delimitation in which the Mayor would be elected from an electorate of 100 wards.
In Uttarakhand, there 92 ULBs out of them eight are municipal corporations, 41 municipal councils and 43 nagar panchayats. It is worth mentioning here that in three ULBs of Kedarnath, Gangotri and Badrinath, the elections are not held.
The HC has stayed the elections in Bhantrojkhan while in Roorkee and Bajpur, the elections would not be held as the issue is pending in the court. It means that the elections would be held in 86 ULBs in the state.
The elections of the ULBs in the state faced legal hurdle following the State Government’s decision to add new areas and start delimitation process of 41 bodies last year.
The Government’s decision was challenged in the court after which the elections scheduled in April this year were deferred.
The term of these bodies ended on May 3, something which forced the state government to appoint administrators to run these bodies.
As per the constitution, these administrators can remain in their place for a period of six months only.