Projected as the semi-final match ahead of the Gujarat Assembly polls, the Municipal Corporation election of State capital Gadhinagar witnessed a tie on Tuesday as both the major political outfits BJP and Congress won equal number of seats.
The polling for 32 seats of Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) was held on Sunday. As the counting begin on Tuesday initially Congress seemed to be on winning side, but end of the day both the parties secured 16 seats each.
Interestingly leaders of both the parties claimed that their parties did better than rivals. And there is a reason also. In fact in the last GMC polls held in the year 2011 Congress had won 18 out of 33 seats and the saffron brigade won 15. GMC then had 33 seats which were reduced to 32 after delimitation. Hence, Congress started controlling the Gujarat’s capital city. However, ahead of the lok Sabha polls in 2014 equation changed as three of the Congress party councillors decided to support BJP. After the development BJP took the control of GMC.
The major defeat in the GMC polls was of Gandhinagar Mayor and BJP candidate Mahendrasinh Rana who lost to Congress candidate Pravin Patel by mere 60 votes. In the last election, Rana won on Congress ticket but he was one of the three candidates to join BJP. This time he fought the election on BJP ticket.
Out of 1,50,610 eligible voters in the State capital, only 78,247 exercised their franchise. It means only over 51 per cent turnout registered in the GMC polls. According to political analysts the lower turnout was due to on-going pro-quota stir of Patels.
In this scenario of tie, people in political circles of Gujarat believe that there are chances that few candidates from either of the party may switch their loyalty in near future. If it doesn’t happen lottery process can be used to select important office-bearers including the new Mayor. At the moment, leaders of both the parties are not ready to speak anything on who would rule GMC.