AAP’s only elected councillor Padamjeet Mehta wins Bathinda mayoral polls as infighting proves costly for Congress

Padamjeet Singh Mehta, the son of Punjab Cricket Association president Amarjeet Singh Mehta, won 33-15 against Congress candidate Barjinder Singh Thekedar.

AAP's Padamjit Mehta wins Bathinda mayoral election. (Source: Facebook/Padamjeet Mehta)

4 min readLudhianaFeb 5, 2025 05:57 PM IST First published on: Feb 5, 2025 at 05:54 PM IST

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Padamjeet Singh Mehta was elected as the new mayor of Bathinda Municipal Corporation in Punjab Wednesday. This was despite the AAP having only one elected councillor in the 50-member general house. Six other councillors from Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Congress had joined the AAP in the past few months.

Of the 50 councillors, 48 were present for the mayoral elections. As many as 33 councillors voted for AAP candidate Mehta, while 15 supported Congress candidate Barjinder Singh Thekedar. Thus, despite having a majority in the general house, the Congress could not get the mayor post due to internal divisions. The Bathinda Municipal Corporation has had no mayor since November 2023 after Congress Mayor Raman Goyal was ousted after she could not prove a majority in the general house.

Padamjeet Mehta, 26, the newly elected AAP councillor from ward number 48, is the son of Amarjeet Singh Mehta, an influential entrepreneur from Bathinda and president of the Punjab Cricket Association. He graduated from the University of Westminster in business management and got a master’s degree in international relations from Regent’s University, both in London..

Talking to The Indian Express, Mehta said, “I am the youngest mayor of Bathinda, and I will sit with all the councillors of the municipal corporation irrespective of their party affiliation to find out projects which are needed for the development of the city. I am the only councillor of the AAP in this general house who got elected on the party symbol.”

The bypoll for ward number 48 happened on December 21, along with local body polls in five municipal corporations and 41 municipal councils. The bypoll was necessitated after Jagrup Singh Gill, a sitting Congress councillor who had served six terms, joined the AAP in August 2021. In March 2022, he was elected as the Bathinda Urban MLA on an AAP ticket, defeating the Congress candidate Manpreet Singh Badal by more than 68,000 votes.

While the AAP has got the mayor’s post, significant divisions within the party have become evident. Gill wanted to nominate Binder Singh for ward number 48, but the party denied him a ticket. As a result, Binder contested the election as an Independent candidate but lost by over 829 votes. Gill supported this Independent candidate rather than the party’s nominee, Mehta, and has been openly criticising him.

Sources revealed that many councillors from Manpreet Singh Badal’s camp voted in favour of Padamjeet Mehta in the mayoral polls. Jagrup Singh Gill also stated that Mehta was a joint candidate supported by both Manpreet Singh Badal’s camp and the Akali Dal.-

However, AAP chief spokesperson Neel Garg said, “We were hopeful that Mehta would be elected as the people of Bathinda wanted development and because of no mayor for more than 15 months, development works were stalled. As anti-defection law is not applicable to councillors, we were hopeful that councillors from other parties would also vote for Mehta for the sake of city development.”

Punjab AAP president Aman Arora said, “I am thankful to the councillors of Bathinda who have voted in favour of Padamjeet Mehta rising above the party lines and thinking about the development of the city.”

Flanked by Padamjeet Mehta, his father Amarjeet Mehta, and minister Hardeep Singh Mundian, Arora added, “We had already got our candidate elected as mayor in five municipal corporations of Punjab, in Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Patiala and Phagwara and now Bathinda becomes the sixth.” Additionally, the AAP has secured a majority in 30 municipal councils, leading to the election of its party candidates as chairpersons.

Raman Goyal’s ouster

The last municipal corporation elections in Bathinda took place in February 2021, and the next are scheduled for February 2026. The Congress won 43 out of 50 seats in the 2021 elections, and Raman Goyal, a loyalist of Manpreet Singh Badal, was appointed as the first woman mayor. At that time, Manpreet was a member of Congress. However, in January 2023, Manpreet joined the BJP.

Following this, Goyal’s husband and 18 other Congress councillors visited Manpreet to congratulate him. In February 2023, Goyal and four other Congress councillors were expelled from the party due to this incident. Then, on November 15, 2023, Raman Goyal was removed from her position as mayor after she could not prove her majority during a no-confidence motion. Later, Ashok Pradhan, the senior deputy mayor, served as the officiating mayor of the Bathinda Municipal Corporation.