The stage is set for the much-awaited Mayoral elections to be held on January 6 in Chandigarh.
The candidates in the race for the top post of Chandigarh Mayor and other two posts of Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor filed their nominations here on Friday. The Congress candidates were the first to file nominations for Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Chandigarh. Poonam Sharma filed nomination as a candidate for the top post of Mayor. She was accompanied by several members of the party, including the former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and Chandigarh Congress president BB Bahl.
The SAD-BJP combine mayoral candidate Heera Negi also filed nomination papers and was accompanied by former Union Minister Harmohan Dhawan, former city MP Satya Pal Jain among others. Both the Congress and the BJP are claiming that they would win even as none of the two parties are confident this time given the changed political equations in the city following the lok Sabha polls and desertion from the Congress camp towards the BJP. City Congress chief, BB Bahl said that even when his party was short of numbers, it would win the election with a majority. “We will manage the required numbers to have our Mayor once again,” he said.
The MCC house has a total of 36 members, comprising 26 elected, nine nominated and Member of Parliament, who is ex-officio member having voting rights during the Mayoral elections to be held on January 6, 2015 here. With SAD-BJP having total of 13 elected councillors in the house of 36 members, the party has an edge over Congress which has 9 elected councillors now. The nominated councillors too have voting rights which is expected to make the contest interesting.
The number of BJP-SAD alliance was reduced to 13 after the demise of SAD councillor Malkiat Singh. Apart from this, there are two councillors of BSP and one independent councillor in the MCC house. It was more than a decade back when the BJP had its mayor in the city. The last time the BJP had its Mayor was from December 1999 to December 2000, when BJP’s Shanta Hit Abhilashi held the post and since then, the numbers were not in favor of the party. The party had also given the city its first Mayor, Kamla Sharma in the year 1997.