With 31 members present in the House, Kamlesh won by a considerable margin, polling 21 votes. Her opponent, Ram Lal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged 10 votes.

Apart from the 14 Congress councillors’ votes and that of Union Minister of State for Finance Pawan Bansal, most of the nominated councillors supported Kamlesh. Of the nine nominated councillors, one was absent, while six voted for Kamlesh.

Kamlesh was earlier elected as mayor in 2004. The post was reserved for a Scheduled Caste candidate this year.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) abstained from voting for the posts of mayor and deputy mayor. They only voted for Akali candidate Gurnam Singh who was contesting the election for the post of senior deputy mayor.

The contest for the seat of senior deputy mayor was the toughest. The winning candidate, H C Kalyan, defeated Gurnam Singh by one vote. While 18 votes were cast in favour of Kalyan, who was the deputy mayor

in the last House, 17 votes went to Gurnam.

For the post of deputy mayor, Congress councillor Vijay Singh Rana got 19 votes, while BJP candidate Rajesh Kumar Gupta got 12 votes.

Terming it as a victory of Congress’ policies, Pawan Kumar Bansal said: “It is for the first time that a candidate from the Balmiki community has been elected to the post of senior deputy mayor. Also, on two of the three posts Dalits have been elected. It was because of our policies that we are the majority party in the House. Our focus will be on the development of the city.”

He added: “There is a need to increase the powers of the corporation. We will constitute a committee and approach the Centre on this. Residents approach the elected representatives with their problems. Issues are resolved faster in the corporation. The Administration and the MC need to work in tandem.”

Outlining her plan for the coming year, Kamlesh said she would ensure that the projects initiated by outgoing mayor Pardeep Chhabra were completed. “Our focus will be on developing parks and green belts, improving the facilities for parking, introduction of community parking, providing better roads and increasing water supply. We will focus on the development of the sectors, colonies and villages,” she said.