CHANDIGARH: Finally 40-year old Devesh Moudgil has been elected as new Mayor of Chandigarh,
after lot of infighting in the BJP. He will be the 22nd mayor of the city.
Moudgil got 22 votes as against Davinder Singh Babla of Congress who managed only five votes. While Gurpreet Singh Dhillon of the saffron party who was elected as senior deputy mayor got 21 votes as
against Sheela Phool Singh of Congress who got six votes and Vinod Aggarwal deputy mayor bagged 22 votes as against Ravinder Kaur of Congress who got four votes, while one vote was declared invalid. In the 27-member Chandigarh Municipal Corporation. As the BJP has twenty counsellors, Congress four, SAD has one and one independent. Member of Parliament Kirron Kher, who is ex-officio member of MC, also voted in elections.
In the run-up to these elections, there was a major rift within the saffron party which was sorted yesterday only with intervention from party high command in Delhi. The outgoing mayor Asha Kumari Jaswal and Ravi Kant Sharma had earlier filed their nominations as independents as they rebelled against the party, but after a truce with Moudgil they withdrew from the race on Monday. Moudgil is considered close to former BJP MP Satya Pal Jain.
The nine nominated councillors, who have earlier played a decisive role in many mayor elections could not vote this year as their right to vote was struck down by the Punjab and Haryana high court in August last year.