Chandigarh Mayoral Polls: BJP's Kuljeet Singh Sandhu, Rajinder Sharma defeat AAP-Congress candidates | 5 points

Bharatiya Janata Party's Kuljeet Singh Sandhu and Rajinder Sharma on Monday won Chandigarh's Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor election. Both Sandhu and Sharma secured 19 votes.  While Sandhu defeated INDIA bloc candidate Gurpreet Singh Gabi, Sharma defeated Nirmala Devi. The Congress and Aam Aadmi Party alliance's candidate Gabi got 16 votes and 1 invalid and Nirmala Devi bagged 17 votes for the posts of deputy mayor.

In the 35 member Chandigarh Municipality the BJP led bloc had 14 seats but their strength was boosted on Februrary 19 when three Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors (Punam Devi, Neha Musawat, and Gurcharan Kala) joined the BJP.

Chandigarh Mayoral Election key updates:

• The elections for the Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation were held last week.

Chandigarh Mayor row: Arvind Kejriwal praises SC for ending ‘adharm’, slams BJP

• The polls were organised after the order of the apex court on the Mayoral polls found that the Returning Officer had deliberately defaced eight ballots that were cast in favour of Kuldeep Kumar to make them invalid.
• A Supreme Court bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud quashed the decision by Returning Officer Anil Masih, who declared BJP candidate Manoj Kumar Sonkar as Chandigarh Mayor on January 30.

AAP's Kuldeep Kumar takes charge as Chandigarh Mayor

• The apex court physically examined the ballot papers and found that they were not defaced. It directed that Kuldeep Kumar be declared as mayor with 20 votes (12 votes which he received and 8 which were for him and were defaced by Masih). Besides, BJP's Sonkar resigned from the post of Chandigarh Mayor. In the meantime, three AAP party councilors switched to BJP, boosting the strength of the saffron party to 17 in the 35-member Chandigarh Municipality.

‘Little disappointed…’ Congress on seat-sharing with Kejriwal's AAP

• With the revised strength in the house, BJP's Kuljeet Singh Sandhu secured 19 votes and won the elections for Senior Deputy Mayor of Chandigarh while the Congress-AAP alliance got 16 votes of its strength of 17. The Mayor, presiding officer to conduct the polls, declared one vote invalid.