L-G cancels Delhi mayor election; AAP, BJP clash

A couple of months after a face-off between Aam Aadmi Party and Bharatiya Janata Party ’over Chandigarh mayoral, the two were again at loggerheads over the issue of the Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena cancelling the election for the posts of mayor, which was this year reserved for a Scheduled Caste candidate, and the deputy mayor.

This time the two sides are locked in a struggle over the Municipal Corporation of Delhi after LG Saxena cancelled the election for the post of mayor and the deputy mayor.

The L-G had on Thursday said that the election for the mayor of Delhi cannot be conducted as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is in jail in a “corruption case” and was thus unable to perform his duties. The APP had countered this saying this contention was not true.

The party leaders stated that only two major pre-requisites were there for the conduct of the mayor’s election, which is held annually. While one of these is a permission from the Election Commission in view of the imposition of the model code of conduct for the Lok Sabha elections, the other was the nomination of a presiding officer by L-G.

The AAP leaders said the ECI had declared that it had “no issues with the MCC angle” in conducting the mayoral elections. However, they said the L-G’s office did not appoint a presiding officer on the ground that it needed to follow the general procedure and consult the Chief Minister of Delhi on the matter first.

In the 250-member MCD House, the AAP has a majority with 134 members while the BJP has 104. Of the remaining 12 members, nine are from Congress while three are Independents. As such, the election of the AAP candidates was almost a certainty. The party had fielded Mahesh Khichi for the post while BJP’s candidate was Kishan Lal. For the post of deputy mayor, AAP had fielded Ravinder Bharadwaj while BJP’s candidate was Neeta Bisht.

In the absence of an election, the current Mayor Shelley Oberoi and Deputy Mayor Aaley Mohammad Khan, both of AAP, will continue in their posts. On Friday, when the House convened, Oberoi criticised the cancellation of the election saying, “this should not have happened” and termed the L-G’s action a “murder of democracy”.