Chandigarh mayoral polls: BJP pulls rug from under AAP feet again

The AAP-Congress combine was believed to be sitting pretty with 20 votes – 13 of the AAP, six of the Congress and one of Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari, the ex-officio member of the corporation. This was one more than the majority of 19 required in the 36-member House. But the BJP, which on paper had only 16 votes, won.

Newly elected mayor of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation BJP’s Harpreet Kaur Babla with other party councillors after the announcement of the election results. (Source: PTI Photo)

In the final count, Babla secured 19 votes, while AAP-Congress candidate Prem Lata managed to get only 17, indicating cross-voting by three members.

Given last year’s developments, the Supreme Court had appointed retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Justice Jaishree Thakur as an observer for the polls.

The run-up to the vote

Just two days ahead of the polls, Congress councillor Gurbax Rawat left her party of over two decades and joined the BJP, taking its tally to 16. The AAP-Congress-AAP tally had come down to 19 excluding Tewari’s vote.

Then, late on Wednesday, a day before the polls, outgoing AAP Mayor Kuldeep Kumar Dhalor along with his brother-in-law Rahul were booked by the Chandigarh Police in connection with a cheating case.

The case was registered based on the complaint of a man called Ravi, who alleged that he had paid Rs 75,000 through UPI transactions on September 10, 11 and 13 last year to Ravi in return for a job as a sanitation worker.

The move was seen by the AAP-Congress as an attempt to prevent Dhalor from casting his vote.

The court was moved, and just 30 minutes before Thursday’s vote, the Punjab and Haryana High Court Thursday granted Dhalor anticipatory bail and permitted him to vote.

How the numbers moved

After cross-voting was believed to have helped its candidate win, the BJP claimed several councillors of both the Congress and AAP were “not happy” with Lata’s candidature as she had jumped ship from the Congress to AAP before the 2021 mayoral polls.

Chandigarh Congress president H S Lucky said: “The AAP-Congress alliance will deliberate over the issue. We will identify who cross-voted and strict action would be initiated against them.”

Interestingly, when the AAP in anticipation perhaps of cross-voting, shifted its councillors to a hotel in Punjab a few days before the polls, three had not not turned up.

But on Wednesday, they were by the AAP side, and publicly expressed “full support” to the alliance candidate.

In some consolation for the AAP and Congress, the combine won the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor. The Congress’s Jasbir Singh Bunty was elected senior deputy mayor, garnering 19 votes against the 17 for the BJP’s Bimla Dubey. Taruna Mehta of the Congress was elected deputy mayor by the same margin against the BJP’s Lakhbir Singh.