Delhi mayor election today amid fresh L-G vs AAP showdown

The national capital will get its new mayor today, a month after the elections to the 250-member Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) took place.

The newly elected councillors will take oath in the first municipal house after the high-stake civic polls. The session will witness the elections of mayor and deputy mayor.

The ruling Aam Aadmi Party had won 134 seats in the December 4 elections, ending the 15 year-rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the civic body which was reunified last year. The saffron party had clinched 104 seats to finish second while Congress bagged nine seats.

Here are the five important developments to know.

1. For the mayor’s post, AAP has fielded Shelly Oberoi and Ashu Thakur. Oberoi is the party’s main contender. On the other hand, Rekha Gupta is the BJP candidate for the top post.

2. The Aam Aadmi Party’s nominees for the deputy mayor’s post are Jalaj Kumar and Aaley Mohammad Iqbal. The saffron party has fielded Kamal Bagri for the election.

3. But the mayoral election has been caught in the midst of a latest showdown between the Aam Aadmi Party and Delhi lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saxena. The AAP has cried foul over the nomination of ten aldermen to the body, accusing the manner in which they were appointed was a complete departure from the ‘settled practice’. Aldermen are the people who are experts in their fields but don’t have voting rights in the mayoral poll.

4.“Wrote a letter to Hon’ble LG against the illegal and unconstitutional manner in which notification on aldermen has been done”, Kejriwal tweeted, while sharing a screenshot of the letter he had written to the L-G.

5. In his letter to the L-G, Kejriwal wrote,”Such series of actions are blatantly unconstitutional, a colourable exercise of power, apart from constituting a fraud on the Constitution and display a worryingly scant regard for provisions of the Constitution, the law laid down by the highest court of the land as also settled convention and practice of the Government of Delhi.”

6. Earlier, the AAP had opposed the L-G’s decision to nominate BJP councillor Satya Sharma as the presiding officer for the first House meeting. It had accused the BJP of being ‘hell-bent on destroying all democratic traditions and institutions.’

7. The post of mayor in Delhi sees five single-year terms on a rotation basis, with the first year being reserved for women, the second for the open category, third for the reserved category, and the remaining two also being in the open category.

8. However, the Congress has said it won’t take part in the elections to mayor and deputy mayor. “Delhiites who elected Congress councillors, voted for them to raise the issues affecting them and work for their welfare and not to fulfil the patrician agenda of AAP and BJP. Our councillors will walk out of the House before voting,” PTI quoted Delhi Congress chief Anil Chaudhary.

9. On Thursday, the AAP appointed councillor Mukesh Goel as the leader of the house in the civic body, party officials told PTI.

10. Ahead of the mayoral polls, both the BJP and AAP had accused each other of trying to poach opposition councillors. BJP councillor Monica Pant had filed a complaint with the Delhi Anti-Corruption Bureau, accusing AAP leader Shikha Garg of trying to bribe her for switching sides. While the BJP had alleged that ‘agent’ of Kejriwal was trying to poach its councillors, the CM claimed the BJP can offer ₹10 lakh to 50 lakh to AAP councilors to defect.