BJP’s Kuljeet Sandhu and Rajinder Sharma win posts of Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation repolls

BJP’s Kuljeet Sandhu and Rajinder Sharma were elected to the posts of Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation repolls on Monday.

Kuljeet Sandhu of the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated Gurpreet Singh Gabi, jointly fielded by the Aam Admi Party and the Congress, by a margin of three votes. The INDIA alliance candidate managed to secure 16 votes, while BJP’s Kuljeet Sandhu bagged 19 votes, and 1 vote was declared invalid.

Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rajinder Sharma grabbed the post of Deputy Mayor, winning against Nirmala Devi, fielded by the INDIA Alliance. Sharma bagged 19 votes out of the total of 36 votes, and Nirmala Devi secured 17 votes.

The results were announced by AAP’s Kuldeep Kumar who was declared the new mayor after the Supreme Court had snubbed the results of the Chandigarh Mayoral Election conducted on January 30 owing to votes being defaced by Presiding Officer Anil Masih. While the apex court had pulled up Masih for defacing the ballots, it also validated the defaced votes, which in turn led to the victory of AAP’s Kuldeep Kumar, over BJP’s Manoj Sonkar who was initially declared as the mayor of Chandigarh.

The Chandigarh Municipal House comprises 17 members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the number went up from 14 to 17 after 3 AAP councilors joined the saffron party on February 19, 10 Aam Aadmi Party councilors, 7 from Congress and 1 councilor of the Siromani Akali Dal.​