The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will convene on Monday for the third time to elect its mayor for the city, two months after the municipal elections were held. The elections couldn't be carried out the last two times following a ruckus between the BJP and AAP members.
AAP's Mayoral candidate Shelly Oberoi had also moved Supreme Court against the delay in holding the mayoral election.
Though the DMC Act 1957 mandates that the mayor and the deputy mayor are to be elected in the very first House that convenes after the civic polls, the first two sessions went without polls being held after the presiding officer adjourned the house following acrimonious exchanges among the members of the BJP and the AAP.
Meanwhile, ahead of the elections, all 135 councillors of AAP have written to the MCD presiding officer Satya Sharma, seeking a ban on the aldermen from voting. According to the party, nominated councillors cannot vote as per the Constitution and the Delhi Municipal Act. "Any attempt on the part of aldermen to vote will be a direct insult to the mandate of the people of Delhi," the AAP said.
The AAP has alleged that BJP was trying to influence and manipulate the exercise."So far, the events leading up to this proposed election have clearly shown the actions of BJP councillors' ill intention to influence and manipulate the election of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and standing committee members. This is unacceptable to AAP and, by extension, to voters in Delhi who had rejected the BJP in the last MCD election."
However, Sharma has denied receiving such a letter.
The BJP, on the other hand, has called a press conference at 9.30 am at the party's Delhi state office ahead of the election. According to a post on the party's Delhi unit Twitter handle, state working president Virendra Sachdeva along with MLA Vijdendra Gupta and the general secretary will address a press conference on Monday.
The civic polls were held on December 4 and the counting of votes took place on December 7. The AAP bagged 134 wards and ended the BJP's 15-year rule in the civic body while the latter got just 104 wards. Congress only won nine seats in the 250-member Municipal House.
While BJP's mayoral candidate is Rekha Gupta, the nominees for the post of deputy mayor are -- Aaley Mohammad Iqbal (AAP) and Kamal Bagri (BJP). Besides the mayor and deputy mayor, six members of the MCD's standing committee are also slated to be elected during the municipal House.
This is also the first Mayoral election after the redrawing of the wards, which led to the formation of the MCD. Though the MCD came into being in April 1958, the corporation was spilt into three separate civic bodies, each having its own mayor in 2012.
However, the Centre brought legislation to unify the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (104 wards), South Delhi Municipal Corporation (104 wards) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (64 wards) into a single entity last year. However, the total number of wards went down to 250 from 272.
For the same reason, it is the first time Delhi gets a mayor after a gap of 10 years. The post of mayor in Delhi sees five single-year terms on a rotation basis, with the first year being reserved for women, the second for the open category, the third for the reserved category, and the remaining two also being in the open category.