BJP wins posts of senior deputy mayor, deputy mayor in Chandigarh Municipal Corporation

CHANDIGARH: BJP's Kuljeet Singh Sandhu and Rajinder Sharma defeated their rivals from the Congress to win the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor in the repolls in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation on Monday.

The Supreme Court on February 20 had overturned the January 30 results of the Chandigarh mayoral poll in which the BJP candidate had emerged a winner, and declared the defeated AAP-Congress alliance candidate Kuldeep Kumar as the city's new mayor. As the mayor is the presiding officer for the elections to the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor, polls were held again.

Sandhu won the post of senior deputy mayor by securing 19 votes. Sharma also got the same number of votes to win the post of deputy mayor.

Congress' Gurpreet Gabi polled 16 votes and Nirmala Devi 17 votes for the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor, respectively. In the election to the post of senior deputy mayor, one vote was declared invalid.

The BJP candidates had won last time too.

In the 35-member municipal House, the BJP has 17 councillors. The number of BJP's strength increased from 14 to 17 after three AAP councillors switched over to it on February 19. The AAP has 10 members while the Congress has seven. The Shiromani Akali Dal has one councillor.

Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher, who is a BJP member, also has voting rights as an ex-officio member of the corporation.

For the posts, the BJP and the Congress had fielded the same set of candidates.