Chandigarh, Jan 30 (IANS) Chandigarh BJP leader, Sanjay Tandon, on Thursday, congratulated the newly elected party’s Mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla, expressing confidence that her leadership would propel the city towards greater progress.
Tandon highlighted her victory as a BJP-supported candidate reflects both the people’s trust and the success of the party’s policies.
Tandon reiterated that the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation would play a crucial role in fulfilling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of a developed India.
He emphasised that with initiatives like the cleanliness drive and the direct implementation of the Central government schemes, the city is poised for rapid development.
He also stated that the Central government remains fully committed to the growth of Chandigarh, ensuring that residents will now benefit directly from these programmes.
Tandon said under the previous AAP-led mayoral leadership, the city’s development had stagnated, and many Central initiatives had failed to gain momentum.
With a BJP-backed mayor now in charge, he assured that these schemes would be swiftly implemented, and additional funding would be sought from the Central government to accelerate progress in Chandigarh.
After the INDIA Bloc’s partners the Congress and AAP faced a humiliating defeat for the Chandigarh mayor’s post despite a majority to the main opposition BJP, the latter accused its partner of indulging in cross-voting.
Senior AAP leader and spokesperson Neel Garg said Congress councillors indulged in cross-voting, leading to the election of BJP’s Mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla, replacing AAP’s Kuldeep Kumar.
Harpreet Kaur defeated AAP’s Prem Lata by two votes. The latter got 17 votes. In the 36-member House, the AAP-Congress alliance has 19 councillors — 13 votes of AAP and six of the Congress, while the BJP has 16 votes.
One vote was of Congress MP Manish Tewari, an ex-officio member of the corporation, taking its total votes to 20. However, Congress candidates from the INDIA Bloc, Jasbir Singh Bunty and Taruna Mehta, were elected as Senior Deputy Mayor, and Deputy Mayor of Chandigarh, respectively, by securing 19 votes each.
AAP’s Neel Garg said the Congress councillors have betrayed them.
“The Congress and the BJP are secretly in collusion. This incident has made it completely clear. Both are two sides of the same coin,” he told the media.
He said the public should not trust Congress either because if people vote for it, their councillors would later support the BJP, claiming that the Congress would do the same in Delhi as well.
“There too, they will end up supporting the BJP. Hence, voting for the Congress is equivalent to wasting one’s vote,” he said.
Garg said the councillors from the Aam Aadmi Party supported the Congress. Their Deputy Mayor and Senior Deputy Mayor were elected with our votes.
“But they have betrayed us,” he added.
In the run-up to the election, Congress councillor Gurbax Rawat switched sides and joined the BJP. However, BJP’s Punjab spokesperson, Pritpal Singh Baliawal, said by winning the mayoral position the BJP has exposed the Congress-AAP alliance, proving that both parties are internally united while misleading the public.
Baliawal emphasised that although the people of Punjab helped Congress win seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress-AAP alliance now stands “exposed” before the public.
He asserted that this will directly impact the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections. He also recalled that Punjab Congress President Amarinder Singh Raja Warring had declared during the Amritsar mayoral elections that, despite the Congress and AAP being part of the INDIA bloc at the national level, the Congress had no past, present, or future association with AAP.
–IANS
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