NEW DELHI: BJP candidate Pravesh Wahi was elected Mayor of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Wednesday, marking the party’s second mayoral win in the city. Wahi, a councillor from Rohini East, won with 156 votes, including support from 14 councillors of the Indraprastha Vikas Party. On the other hand, Congress candidate Hazi Zaraf secured nine votes.
Meanwhile, BJP councillor from Anand Vihar, Monika Pant, was elected Deputy Mayor after securing 156 votes.
In terms of the Standing Committee, Jai Bhagwan Yadav from Begumpur and Manish Chadha from Paharganj were elected from the BJP, while AAP councillor Jalaj Chaudhary from Shalimar Bagh was also chosen as a member of the MCD panel.
The new Mayor comes from a Khatri Punjabi family that migrated from Rawalpindi. As per reports, he received his early education at an MCD primary school in Old Delhi and has been associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh since his teenage years.
Wahi was first elected as a councillor from Rohini in 2007 and later represented Naharpur, serving his second term from 2012 to 2017.
Over the years, he held several key positions, including chairman of the Rohini Zonal Committee from 2010 to 2012 and chairman of the Standing Committee in the erstwhile North Corporation from 2016 to 2017.
Wahi worked as an area representative for the Vishva Hindu Parishad in 1990 and later went on to become a district president in 1998. In 2002, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party Yuva Morcha and took on several organisational responsibilities before stepping into electoral politics.
The electoral college for this year’s mayoral election consisted of 273 votes, including 249 councillors, 14 MLAs nominated by the Delhi Assembly, seven Lok Sabha MPs, and three Rajya Sabha members from Delhi. A candidate needed at least 137 votes to secure victory.