The 14 Independent corporators, who won the Bhilai Municipal Coporation (BMC) elections would play a vital role in electing the Speaker of the urban civic body. The elections for the Speaker will be held on January 23.
In the recently held elections for 70 wards, the BJP managed to bag 29 wards while the Congress candidates won in 27 wards. Independent candidates managed to win in 14 wards.
It may be mentioned that in the House of 70 elected representatives the magic figure for majority is 36. To achieve the magic figure both the BJP and Congress are leaving no stone unturned to elect the Speaker from their party.
According to information after the oath taking ceremony of the corporators held on Monday, hectic meetings are in progress at both the camps.
Sources informed that compared to the BJP, the Congress seems to be more active with organising meetings for chalking out strategies for the forthcoming Speaker elections.
After the elections results were declared on December 31, 2015, the newly elected Congress Mayor, Devendra Yadav, along with the senior Congress leaders and his mentors started convening meetings with the elected Congress corporators to chalk out strategies for the Speaker elections.
It seems the Congress is leaving no stone unturned to win the Speaker’s post as both the posts was with the party in the last tenure where Nirmala Yadav was the Mayor and Rajendra Arora was the Speaker.
Meanwhile in the BJP camp, after losing the Mayor’s post the senior leaders, despite having 29 corporators in the House (2 more than the Congress) seems to be not in a hurry but adopting wait and watch policy.
Sources informed that even the BJP corporators are not aware about the strategies going to be adopted by the party for the forthcoming elections. ‘Not a single meeting of the elected corporators have been convened for the forthcoming Speaker elections’, said a newly elected BJP Corporator on condition of anonymity.
He further stated that compared to the BJP the Congress seems to be more serious about the Speaker elections.
Here it needs to be mentioned that the BJP with 29 elected corporators need 7 for the magic figure of 36 corporators while the Congress with 27 elected corporators need 9 more.
According to sources, among the several names doing round in the party circle from both the BJP and the Congress, Rakesh Arora from the BJP and Subhadra Singh and Neeraj Pal from the Congress seems to be the front runners as the Speaker candidates.
However, the Independent corporators with 14 in numbers, seems to be playing a vital role in deciding the fate of the Speaker candidates to be fielded by both the BJP and the Congress. Rumours are on the rife that the independents would be fielding their candidate for the Speaker’s post. The prominent names doing round in the Independent camp include Independent Mayoral candidate, Vashisht Narayan Mishra, who polled nearly 49,000 votes in the corporation elections. The other name doing round include Rikesh Sen, who was denied the party ticket from the BJP and won the elections as Independent candidate. Moreover, Rikesh never lost the elections held during the last four tenures.
Now it remains to be seen whether the independents would support the Congress or the BJP or the candidate proposed to be fielded by them.
Any way the 14 Independent corporators are going to play a vital role in electing the fourth Speaker of the BMC.