Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Raja Iqbal Singh on Friday was elected as the new mayor of Delhi.
Raja Iqbal Singh secured a comfortable victory by bagging 133 votes of the 142 total votes.
While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) boycotted the mayoral election, citing alleged defections engineered by the BJP, the Congress candidate Mandeep, got just eight votes.
After the victory, Raja Iqbal Singh said: “The main goal will be to improve the sanitation system of Delhi, remove the mountains of garbage, solve the problem of water logging and provide all the basic and essential facilities to the people of Delhi. We will all work together with full dedication and hard work.”
One vote was declared as invalid.
In the previous mayoral polls held in November last year, AAP’s Mahesh Kumar Khinchi had won by a margin of just 3 votes.
Following the victory in the mayoral election, the BJP regained control of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) after a gap of two years.
Out of the total 250 seats, BJP’s tally in the MCD stands at 117, while AAP’s count is at 113.
12 seats are vacant due to some councillors being elected to the Delhi Assembly and one to the Lok Sabha.
The electoral college for the mayoral election includes MCD’s current strength of 238 councillors, 10 MPs (seven from the Lok Sabha and three from the Rajya Sabha) and 14 MLAs — Delhi Assembly Speaker Vijender Gupta has nominated 11 BJP and 3 AAP MLAs as the electors.
On Thursday, Raja Iqbal Singh told PTI that Delhiites have entrusted the BJP with the responsibility of fixing the city’s problems.
“AAP has already accepted its defeat. We will eliminate corruption and complete all the pending work that was stalled over the past two years,” he had said.
He had further stated that once the mayor is elected, elections for the standing committees will be held promptly.
AAP councillor and former Mayor Shelly Oberoi and Leader of the House Mukesh Goyal held a press conference on Thursday where they reiterated their party’s decision to boycott the election.
Oberoi accused the BJP of turning the civic polls into a farce with its so-called “triple engine power.”
They added that under Arvind Kejriwal’s leadership, several people-centric decisions were taken, but the BJP’s only objective has been to “seize power.”
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