EVEN AS senior BJP leaders managed to get rebel candidates from city BJP chief Sanjay Tandon’s camp, Mayor Asha Jaswal and Ravi Kant Sharma, officially announce withdrawal of their nomination, there is another big challenge before the senior leadership now: cross-voting within the party. The BJP’s official mayoral candidate Davesh Moudgil is backed by MP Kirron Kher and former MP Satya Pal Jain. From the beginning, there have been various factions within the BJP. “Now we need to assure that there is no cross-voting. In order to let down each other, this can happen. Tandon’s camp is already furious with Moudgil as the choice of mayor,” said a senior leader of the party. Tandon’s supporters have already started Moudgil’s humilation on social networking sites. One supporter’s status on Facebook along with apology letter stated: “Moudgil, Mayor banne k liye paer pakad kar maafi maangne ko tayar.” The BJP has a majority in the House with 20 councillors. The Congress which has a strength of just four councillors in the House is also expecting that cross-voting within the party will help them. This time, the nine nominated councillors do not have voting rights. To become a mayor, a candidate needs 14 votes out of 27. One vote is that of Member of Parliament Kirron Kher who is the ex-officio member of the House. One councillor is Independent while one is from SAD which is in alliance with the BJP and has already exntended support to Moudgil. Early this year, BJP councillor Heera Negi lost the seat of Finance and Contract Committee in the elections after cross-voting and Congress councilllor Devinder Singh Babla won. On the BJP factions’ response, the Congress is still sure of their win. City Congress chief Pardeep Chhabra said, “We are sure that we will get more votes because these factions can never get along. There would be cross-voting cent per cent which will go in our favour.”
