The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday won the post of the senior deputy mayor in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation.

The BJP’s Kuljit Singh Sandhu was elected to the post as he defeated Gurpreet Singh Gabi, the candidate jointly fielded by the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, by three votes, reported The Indian Express.

Sandhu got 19 votes and Gurpreet got 16, while one vote was declared invalid.

In the 35-member municipal house, the BJP has 17 councillors. The BJP’s strength increased from 14 to 17 after three Aam Aadmi Party councillors joined the saffron party on February 19. The Aam Aadmi Party has ten members while the Congress has seven. The Shiromani Akali Dal has one councillor.

Voting for the post of deputy mayor will also take place on Monday.

The re-election to the two posts was necessitated after the Supreme Court on February 20 set aside the result of the January 30 Chandigarh mayoral election declared by Anil Masih, the presiding officer, noting that he defaced the ballot papers in order to invalidate them.

During the elections that took place on January 30, Manoj Sonkar from the BJP bagged 16 votes and defeated Kuldeep Kumar Tita, the joint candidate fielded by the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress, who secured 12 votes. However, this was after eight votes from the Opposition alliance to Tita were declared invalid by Masih.

Sonkar had then announced Sandhu as senior deputy mayor and Rajinder Sharma as the deputy mayor. In its judgement on February 20, the top court had declared Tita as the validly elected candidate for the mayor’s post.

Also read:

Rising doubts over the fairness of voting in India are a bad sign for its democracy