INDIA:#
Ruckus broke out at the Assembly hall Saturday after BJP candidate for the post of Chandigarh Mayor Sarabjit Kaur won the election by a margin of just one vote by bagging 14 against Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Anju Katyal.
Although both AAP and BJP were tied at 14 votes each, later, one vote in AAP’s favour was declared invalid, paving way for the BJP candidate’s victory.
Crying foul, AAP councillors sat next to the newly-elected Mayor and did not allow Deputy Commissioner Vinay Pratap to move, stalling the election process of the post of Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor. Kaur has to get the elections done for both the posts now.
Congress had already opted out of the election by not fielding any candidate and all seven councillors abstained from the voting process. They were joined by the lone Akali Dal councillor, Hardeep Singh.
Congress was in a fix because if it had voted for AAP to ensure BJP’s defeat, it would have strengthened the AAP’s position ahead of the Punjab elections and if it had voted for BJP, a wrong message would have gone to the public.
After recently winning 14 of the 35 seats in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation polls, AAP was looking to make it to the Mayor’s post for a major boost ahead of the upcoming Assembly election in Punjab. Meanwhile, BJP did its best to save its image after its poor performance in the civic body polls where the number of wards it held fell from 26 to 12.
Saturday, initially both AAP and BJP managed to bag 14 votes each. While BJP had 13 councillors voting in its favour, one vote came from Member of Parliament Kirron Kher, who is an ex-officio member of the Municipal House.
