AAP and BJP win three seats each in Delhi’s civic body panel

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have won three seats each in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s standing committee. The results of the polls that were held on February 24, 2023, were declared after the Delhi High Court overturned Mayor Shelly Oberoi’s request for a repoll and ordered immediately to announce the poll’s results.

Following the court’s order, Oberoi said the result of the election for members of the standing committee has been declared.  “The AAP government of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is committed to forming committees as soon as possible,” she said.

Kamaljeet Sehrawat, Gajender Singh Daral, and Pankaj Luthra from the BJP and Mohd Aamil Malik, Mohini, and Raminder Kaur from the AAP have been elected to the standing committee of the MCD.

Even though AAP is the ruling party in the MCD, the outcome of the standing committee election could have an impact on how the civic body operates since most of the executive decisions are taken by the committee, which now has equal representation from both parties.

A disagreement over one invalidated vote caused the results to be delayed, which led Delhi Mayor Shelly Oberoi to announce re-election. Although this decision caused an uproar, re-election was scheduled for February 27, 2023.

Shikha Rai and Kamaljeet Sehrawat, two BJP councilors challenged the Mayor’s decision in the court to which the court stated that to declare a vote invalid was “bad in law”. The court ordered that the rejected ballot be counted.

After AAP won the December election and ended BJP’s 15-year dominance, the two parties have been engaged in a heated power struggle over the MCD.