Three Aam Aadmi Party councillors who had jumped the ship helped the Bharatiya Janata Party to win elections for the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor on March 4.
Repolls for Senior & Deputy Mayor Election after SC results
Fresh polls to these posts were completed after the Supreme Court on February 20 overturned the results of the January 30 Chandigarh mayoral polls – which had been fraudulently decided in favour of the BJP candidate – and declared the AAP-Congress joint candidate Kuldeep Kumar the validly elected city mayor.
The jointly Congress-AAP alliance, which fought a legal battle in the SC to wrest the mayor’s post from the BJP’s grasp, was heavily relying on the defected AAP councillors to return the party fold to win the remaining two posts.
Kejriwal’s AAP & Congress faced setback
AAP, sources said, made attempts to win them over but they remained incommunicado and stayed with BJP, finally paving the way for the victory of their candidates.
Reacting to the development, AAP Chandigarh leader Prem Garg told news media platform that AAP-Congress alliance had been poised to win these seats and would have done so if the BJP-appointed presiding officer Anil Masih had not engineered blatant rigging during January 30 mayoral polls.
BJP’s Kuljeet Singh Sandhu was elected senior deputy mayor, while Rajinder Sharma won the post of deputy mayor In a setback to the INDIA bloc, comprising the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress, the BJP won both the senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor seats in Chandigarh on Monday.
Vote tactics in Chandigarh Mayor Election
BJP’s Kuljeet Singh Sandhu won the elections for senior deputy mayor of Chandigarh, securing 19 votes. He defeated INDIA bloc candidate Gurpreet Singh Gabi, who got 16 votes. One vote was declared invalid.
Rajendra Kumar Sharma won the deputy mayor post, getting 19 votes, while the INDIA bloc’s Nirmala Devi secured 17 votes.
In the 35-member Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, the BJP had 14 seats but its strength was boosted on February 19 when three Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors joined it.
The three former AAP councillors are Punam Devi, Neha Musawat, and Gurcharan Kala. They joined the BJP in the presence of party national general secretary Vinod Tawde in Delhi.
The end to the deadlock over these posts comes after the mayor election conducted in January in which Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Manoj Sonkar won the post of Mayor by securing 16 votes.
Later, 8 votes were declared invalid due to which Congress and half member protested in the house alleging poll rigging after which their councillors boycotted the election to the post of Senior deputy mayor and Deputy Mayor ultimately resulting in the victory of Mr Sandhu and Mr Sharma of the BJP yesterday.
