New Delhi: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) adjourned Monday for the third time without electing a mayor. The MCD House, which met on 6 February, was adjourned until further notice following a ruckus between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the voting rights of nominated members, or aldermen.
The results for the municipal elections in the Capital were declared on 7 December, 2022. The AAP won 134 of total 250 wards, while BJP came second with 104. Later AAP’s tally went up by 1 after a Congress councillor joined the party, and an Independent councillor joining the BJP raised its tally to 105.
The House met for the first time on 6 January but got adjourned following violent clashes between the AAP and BJP leaders. The councillors could take oath during the second meeting on 24 January, but mayor and deputy mayor weren’t elected again.
The AAP has been claiming the aldermen have no rights to vote in the election of a mayor or deputy mayor, while the presiding officer Satya Sharma Monday declared in the house that the 10 aldermen who were appointed by the lieutenant governor (LG) could vote in the House, leading to protests by AAP members.
A day before, all 135 councillors of the AAP, in a signed letter to the presiding officer, had sought debarment of the aldermen from voting in election of mayor, deputy mayor and standing committee.
“This is to reiterate that as per the Article 243 R of the Constitution of India and as given in the Proviso to Section 3 (b)(i) of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957, the nominated members (Alderman) are not entitled to vote in the above-mentioned elections”, the letter quoted.
Speaking to media persons, Delhi BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri said that the central government will decide who can vote in the house. He also asked that if the aldermen can vote in zones — according to a 2015 Delhi High Court judgment — why can’t they vote within the house?
According to BJP Delhi leader Harish Khurana, technically the presiding officer has the full right to say how they want the house to function. If the AAP has a problem with the presiding officer giving voting rights to the nominated members or the way the officer is running the house, they can go to court, he told ThePrint.
Nirmal Jain, a former BJP councillor from the East Delhi Municipal Corporation that existed before MCD’s reunification, said it is not written anywhere that aldermen cannot vote in the election of mayor and deputy mayor.
“The presiding officer’s ruling shall only be challenged in the court of law and the AAP should respect the ruling. This confusion over voting rights is being created because earlier the aldermen were appointed after the formation of the House. This time the aldermen were appointed by the LG before the voting,” he told ThePrint.
He said that while it is not written anywhere that the alderman can vote for the election of mayor and deputy mayor, it isn’t forbidden by law either.
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What does the High Court ruling say?
In a 2015 Delhi High Court judgment — in response to a petition filed by Congress councilors Onika Mehrotra, Narender Jain and Surender Solanki — the court had said the aldermen can vote as members of the ward committees. There is one ward committee to govern each of 12 zones.
Justice Vibhu Bakhru, who delivered the verdict, said, “the petitioners cannot file their nomination or offer their candidature for being elected as Chairperson of the Wards Committee. The petitioners may also offer their candidature for being elected as member of the Standing Committee. In the event any of the petitioners are elected as member of the Standing Committee, they may vote at any meeting of the Standing Committee and also offer their candidature for being elected as Deputy Chairperson of the Standing Committee; but, they cannot offer their candidature for being appointed as a Chairperson of the Standing Committee”. The BJP is using this ruling to claim that if the aldermen can have voting rights in the zones, they can also have voting rights in the House.
Satbir Singh, former mayor of Delhi and the last Congress mayor after the BJP took over the municipal body, said both the parties should collaboratively let the election happen. “If there is no mayor, no standing committee, how will the budget be presented and other work get done in the corporation?” he asked. Though he added that the aldermen did not have the right to vote when he was mayor.
“The aldermen did not have the voting rights when I was mayor. Now the power is in LG’s hands. What can we say? AAP should approach court if BJP is not letting the house function”, he told ThePrint.
Narender Jain, a former alderman from the Congress who was appointed in 2015, said, “We went to court because when a nominated member in the Rajya Sabha gets the same rights as other MPs, why can’t a nominated member of the house can have the same voting rights as other elected ward councilors?”
“The High Court have given us the power to vote in zones but not in the house. It’s also not the norm that first nominated members take the oath, which happened this time”, Jain said to ThePrint.
A serving law expert at the Civic Centre, who wished to not be named, said that according to the HC ruling, the 2015 judgment should be followed which gave zonal voting rights to the alderman.
The AAP has a majority in the House with 135 members, while the BJP has 105 councillors. The House will elect six members of the standing committee and the ward committees will choose the remaining of the 12-member committee which is the second-highest decision-making body after the House of councillors.
Since non-administrative decisions cannot be taken in the MCD without the approval of the standing committee, the BJP stands to gain if it can get more of its members elected to this committee.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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