Delhi MCD House adjourned: Here’s what happened so far

The Standing Committee polls rolled on close to midnight as several members of the BJP and the AAP exchanged blows and hurled plastic bottles and ballot boxes at each other in the chamber of the MCD House, on a day the city got its new mayor.

The Indian Express was present in the House overnight. Here is a blow-by-blow account of what happened:

Things started smoothly enough on Wednesday morning, when the MCD house elected its new mayor, AAP’s Shelly Oberoi. She won the election, which was held during the MCD House meeting, with 150 votes, against 116 for BJP’s Rekha Gupta. After the results were declared, Oberoi took over from presiding officer, BJP’s Satya Sharma. AAP’s Aaley Mohammad Iqbal was elected as the Deputy Mayor, after he won with 147 votes, out of the total 266 votes cast. Two votes were declared invalid.

But later in the day, at around 6.30 pm, the House descended into complete pandemonium just as the Standing Committee election began.

BJP and AAP councillors exchanged blows, and at one point even resorted to flinging water bottles, fruit and ballot boxes at one another. Some videos show members pushing and shoving each other.

The newly-elected mayor, in fact, alleged late last night that she had been “attacked” by some BJP members — a charge that was quickly shot down by the saffron party.

“BJP Councillors just tried to attack me while I was conducting the Standing Committee elections, as per Supreme Court orders! This is the extent of BJP’s Gundagardi that they are trying to attack a woman Mayor,” Oberoi tweeted.

Meanwhile, the BJP alleged that during the secret voting, some councillors were taking photographs of their ballots on their mobile phones, which they pointed out was a violation of the secret ballot. Following this, the party demanded that the voting be stopped and a fresh mandate taken. Oberoi, however, refused and said they were all “respected councillors and can keep their mobile phones with them.” A bitter exchange broke out between the two parties, which unsurprisingly led to an adjournment.

During this time, AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj hit out against BJP, accusing the party of attempting to “postpone” the polls. “Supreme Court had clearly said that all elections should happen in the first sitting. So, we want the elections today only, whether it happens at night or in the morning,” he told news agency PTI. “BJP deliberately wants to conduct the whole election of standing committee again. In this way, the process will never end. The MCD Secretary has also said that they only have 245 ballots, and we can’t conduct the whole election again.”

Hitting back, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla called it the AAP an “Anarchist Acrimonious Party”. “AAP = Anarchist Acrimonious Party. Fearing defeat and cross-voting; you engineer every attempt to sabotage and steamroll rules and laws! Then play the victim card! If this is how affairs will be conducted on Day 1 by the Mayor people of Delhi better brace themselves,” Poonawalla tweeted.

Well after midnight, senior BJP leader Vijender Gupta held a press conference and slammed the AAP and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for how things had unfolded in the MCD House.

On Thursday morning, the chaos continued. A fist fight broke out between some women councillors and at one point a ballot box was seen flying across the chamber of the House as proceedings were adjourned for the 13th time.

So the AAP won mayor polls. But does it control MCD?

While the mayor is the nominal head of the civic body, it is the Standing Committee which has executive powers. Powers to grant financial approval to projects, discussions related to and the finalisation of policies to be implemented, appoint sub-committees (on issues such as education, environment, parking etc) and form regulations are under the ambit of the Standing Committee, which has 18 members.

While six members of this committee are to be elected in the House, the remaining 12 will be elected by Ward Committees later.

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