The highlight of the day-long voting process, however, was cross-voting by a Congress councillor in Shahdara (north) zone and a stand-off between two BJP councillors vying for the post of chairman for the Rohini ward committee.

Congress party leader in the municipal house, Ram Babu Sharma today accused his councillor Bimla Sharma of voting in favour of the BJP candidate during elections in Shahadara.

In this zone, BJP's Hari Ram was elected to the post of Chairman, Bimla Sharma from the Congress was elected Deputy Chairman and BJP's Divya Jaiswal was elected as member of the Standing Committee from this zone. Miffed at the results, Sharma said that the two BJP candidates got elected because of cross-voting by Bimla Sharma and he would be issuing her a show-cause notice.

Dramatic scenes were witnessed in the elections in Rohini Zone. Two BJP councillors, Raj Puri Gupta and Mahendra Nagpal had both filed their nominations for the post of chairman. With both of them refusing to bow out, the party had withdrawn the nominations of both of them yesterday. Mahendra Nagpal was today, however, unanimously declared elected as chairman.

Interestingly, in five of the zones, the decision was made by lottery because of ties between the BJP and the Congress candidates. BJP candidates Vijay Pal, Swaroop Singh and Bhagwan Das were elected as chairmen respectively from city zone, south zone and Sadar Paharganj zone after the ``lottery''.

Similarly, Congress candidates Sahi Ram and Ishwar Singh were selected to head the ward committees in the central zone and Najafgarh zone, respectively, on the basis of lottery, as they had both polled the same number of votes.

BJP's Mahesh Chander from Karol Bagh, Usha Mehta from west zone, Ramesh Mohan Chauhan from Civil Lines zone, Mahesh Chander Nagar from Shahadara (south) and Mahendra Nagpal from Rohini were unanimously elected to head the ward committees in their zones. The post of Deputy Chairman was bagged by Congress candidates Panna Lal in south zone, Shashi Chauhan in central zone, L.N. Aggarwal in Sadar Paharganj zone and Shabnam Begum in Najafgarh.

Janata Dal's Hafiz Salimuddin was elected Deputy Chairman in the city zone. BJP candidates M.L. Balmiki, D.P. Atal, Hira Lal, Sarla Parihar and Kanak Aggarwal were unanimously elected Deputy Chairmen in Karol Bagh, west zone, Civil Lines, Shahdara (south) and Rohini zone respectively.

This time around, two Congress candidates -- Azhar Shagoofa and Ram Gopal Sharma and four BJP candidates -- Ramnath Sachdeva, Divya Jaiswal, Poornima Vidyarthi and P.R. Sahni -- were elected members of the Standing Committee.