| Font Size |
Chhabra, a former senior deputy mayor in 2004 and twice elected as councillor in the House, got 20 votes. He defeated his nearest rival, Gurcharan Dass Kala of the BJP, by 10 votes. Jatinder Bhatia of the BSP got 5 votes. One vote was declared invalid. All 36 councillors were present in the House.
Even though it was a triangular contest, there was no second round of voting as the Congress managed the all important figure of 19 votes in the very first round.
Chhabra had the support of 16 councillors in the House, including local MP Pawan Bansal. He apparently got support from the nominated councillors as well. Congress candidates got 20 votes each for all the three seats. The SAD-BJP alliance had eight councillors in the House, while the BSP had only 3. Both could manage the support of only 2 councillors outside their parties, leaving them way behind the Congress tally.
For the post of Senior Deputy Mayor, Anju Beniwala of the Congress defeated Surinder Kumar Jagota of BJP by 8 votes. Jagota got 12 votes while the third councillor in the fray, Sarita Devi of the BSP, managed 4 votes.
For the post of Deputy Mayor, Congress’s Harphool Chander Kalyan defeated Gurnam Singh of the SAD-BJP alliance by 4 votes.
As convener Brigadier Kuldeep Singh Chandpuri declared the winner of the polls, Congress councillors led Chhabra to the Mayor’s seat from where he conducted the proceedings of the House.
After the win, the mayor and deputy mayors met the UT Administration and had langar with the employees at Fire Station, Sector 17.
‘20-20 ka zamana hai’
“Aaj kal 20-20 ka zamana hai,” said an ecstatic Pardeep Chhabra, after he became the 14th Mayor of Chandigarh. He was referring to the votes polled in favour of the Congress for each seat.
Interacting with mediapersons at the MC office, Chhabra said he will focus on maintaining the beauty and improving sanitation in Chandigarh. He said he will work towards completing all the pending projects in the MC within three months. “The pending work requires coordination with the administration and if there is no hitch from there, I will try to finish off the major projects in the next three months,” he said.
When questioned about whether he, too, will continue holding art and culture programmes, which were given importance by the previous mayor, Harjinder Kaur, Chhabra said he is not against such programmes but he said he will focus on development as well. Gender budgeting and uplift of economically weaker women, completion of Mani Majra banquet hall, running state-of-the-art ambulances, computerisation of water works and curtailing wasteful expenditure will be his other priorities, said Chhabra.
Discuss this story on expressindia forums
|
|