Even as the Supreme Court on Tuesday held Kuldeep Kumar, the joint candidate of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress, to be validly elected as Chandigarh Mayor, the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation is set to experience a peculiar situation as the BJP would be holding the key surrounding decisions on varying agendas surrounding the city’s work that would come up before the House.
Ahead of a hearing surrounding Chandigarh’s mayoral election in the top court, the city’s Mayor Manoj Sonkar had on February 18 resigned from his position, and also three AAP councillors — Neha, Poonam and Gurcharan Kala — joined the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).
The composition
In the civic body, there are 35 councillors while the Member of Parliament from Chandigarh (belonging to the BJP) is an ex-officio member of the municipal corporation, and also has a voting right. Before the AAP councillors switched sides, the BJP had 14 councillors. The AAP had 13 councillors while the Congress had seven councillors. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has one member in the House.
Notably, at present, the BJP has 17 councillors and with the backing of the MP in its favour, the number is 18, while the AAP has been reduced to 10 councillors, tilting the majority in favour of the BJP.
Trial by fire
The House meetings would put to test the political manoeuvring skills of INDIA bloc partners. With the number of the AAP and the Congress councillors jointly staying at 17, and the BJP having 18, decisions on the city’s development work through different agendas by majority votes would be a difficult task to achieve for the AAP-Congress-led Mayor, and it would be eventually the BJP that would play the critical role in approving or disapproving agendas in the House.
“We humbly accept the decision of the Supreme Court. But in the current scenario (after the three AAP councillors joined the BJP), the position is that the BJP is the single largest party in the House. The AAP with 10 councillors is sitting on the ruling side and the BJP which is the majority party is sitting in the Opposition. This is a mockery of democracy. In a democracy, the current numbers should be applicable,” said Arun Sood, former Mayor and a senior leader of BJP in Chandigarh.
