Chandigarh: A day after the much awaited Chandigarh mayoral elections were postponed, the Union Territory administration announced Friday that the polls would now be held on 6 February.
In a press statement, Chandigarh deputy commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh said that the decision follows an assessment of the security law and order position by the Senior Superintendent of Police.
The decision, however, was challenged by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Kuldeep Singh in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Singh, the AAP mayoral candidate, urged the HC to allow election within the next 24 hours
Elections to the posts of mayor, senior deputy mayor, and deputy mayor were to take place on Thursday but were postponed after the presiding officer Anil Masih reported that he was unwell.
The elections are being considered as a litmus test of the INDIA bloc formed by opposition parties coming together against the BJP. For these elections, the AAP and the Congress had joined hands against the BJP and were hoping to grab all the four posts in the Chandigarh municipal corporation.
On Thursday, AAP and Congress councillors created a huge ruckus outside the municipal corporation office protesting against the postponement of the elections.
Former railways minister and senior Congress leader Pawan Bansal said that the councillors were not being allowed to go inside the building, which, he said, was “unprecedented”.
AAP Rajya Sabha member Raghav Chadha told the media that the BJP was behind the move as it was scared of the alliance and was not ready to accept its defeat.
Team INDIA is all set to beat the BJP and score its first electoral victory, wresting the Chandigarh Mayor's post.
However, officer responsible for conducting the election today has mysteriously fallen ill and election has been deferred.
What might be the sudden secret… pic.twitter.com/xzeOpbajKB
— Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) January 18, 2024
The AAP had also moved the court Thursday challenging the postponement following which a division bench asked the UT administration to file its reply by 23 January.
Advocate Anil Mehta, senior standing counsel of the Chandigarh administration, told ThePrint that the police had filed a report in a sealed cover to the HC on Thursday evening with details of the law and order challenges being faced in holding the election.
Mehta alleged that the police had enough evidence to show that the Punjab Police was escorting councillors in police vehicles to the civic body’s office for the election meeting, apart from other breach of rules.
“Three petitions have been filed in this matter in the past 30 hours,” said Mehta.
While the municipal polls are held every five years, elections to the four top positions are held every year in the beginning of the year from among the elected 35 councillors. The BJP has 14 councillors apart from an ex-officio member, local MP Kirron Kher, who also has voting rights. The AAP has 13 councillors and Congress 7. The Shiromani Akali Dal has one member.
For the past two years, the mayor has been of the BJP. Currently the mayor of Chandigarh is BJP’s Anup Gupta. This year, the Congress and the AAP have come together to put up joint candidates — AAP’s Kuldeep Singh for the post of the mayor with Congress’ Gurpreet Singh Gabi as senior deputy mayor and Congress’ Nirmala Devi as deputy mayor.
The BJP has fielded Manoj Sonkar, Kuljeet Sandhu, and Rajinder Sharma for the posts of mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor.
With the coming together of Congress and the AAP, the BJP is expected to lose its mayoral seat in the corporation. Cross-voting by the Congress and the AAP councillors, if any, appears to be the only hope for the BJP to retain the post.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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