Delhi Mayor election: MCD receives three nominations from AAP, BJP for the post; polling on January 6

Delhi Mayor election: Three nominations -- two from the AAP and one from the BJP -- have been received for the post of Delhi mayor ahead of the mayoral election to be held on January 6, MCD officials said.
However, one candidate of the AAP is a back-up candidate, party sources said. 

The last date to file nominations for the posts of mayor, deputy mayor and six members of the standing committee of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was December 27. Three nominations each have been received for the posts of mayor and deputy mayor, and seven nominations for the members of the MCD panel, the civic body said on Tuesday.

The nominees for the post of mayor are -- Shelly Oberoi and Ashu Thakur (AAP), and Rekha Gupta (BJP). The nominees for the post of deputy mayor are -- Aaley Mohammad Iqbal and Jalaj Kumar (AAP), and Kamal Bagri (BJP). AAP's candidates for mayor and deputy mayor -- Shelly Oberoi and Aaley Mohammad Iqbal -- had filed their nominations on Monday. The party's backup candidates -- Thakur and Kumar -- for the two posts had filed their nominations on Tuesday, the party sources said.

On Tuesday, the BJP declared Shalimar Bagh councillor Rekha Gupta as its mayoral candidate to challenge AAP's Oberoi in the January 6 election. Among the seven nominations for the members of the standing committee -- four are from the AAP, two from the BJP, and one Independent councillor Gajender Singh Daral, who later joined the BJP.

The list of nominations shared by the MCD in a statement, however, referred to Daral as an "Independent" nominee. Aamil Malik of Karawal Nagar ward, Raminder Kaur from Harinagar ward, Mohini Jeenwal of Seemapuri ward and Sarika Chaudhary of Jangpura ward -- all from the AAP -- had also filed their nominations for the standing committee's member on Monday. From BJP, Kamaljeet Sehrawat from Dwarka-B ward and Pankaj Luthra from Jhilmil ward have been nominated for the post of MCD panel's members.

Sehrawat has served as the mayor of the erstwhile South Delhi Municipal Corporation. All the party candidates filed nominations for the election after their names were announced by the Delhi BJP. Three Independent candidates, including two women, had emerged victorious in the MCD polls held on December 4. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the elections with 134 seats and the BJP bagged 104 seats in the 250-member civic body.

Mundka councillor Daral joined the BJP in the presence of party's Delhi unit working president Virendra Sachdeva and its former chief Vijender Gupta. Welcoming Daral into the party fold, Sachdeva on Monday said his joining the BJP will strengthen the party. With Daral joining the BJP, the party's strength in the MCD has risen to 105.

The election of mayor is held through a secret ballot and councillors are free to vote for any candidate since the anti-defection law does not apply to it. The voters for the election of mayor are 250 councillors, seven Lok Sabha and three Rajya Sabha MPs from Delhi and 14 MLAs nominated by the Legislative Assembly. The Delhi Assembly Speaker has nominated 13 AAP and one BJP MLAs to the MCD. The total votes for mayoral election are 274. The number game favours AAP having 150 votes against 113 of the BJP.

The Congress has nine councillors while two others are independents in the MCD House. There are 18 members in the standing committee of the MCD, of which 12 are elected from the zones and six from the House. The post of mayor is considered prestigious and a Delhi mayor wielded a lot of power until the erstwhile unified MCD, set up in 1958, was trifurcated into North Delhi, South Delhi and East Delhi municipal corporations in 2012 with a mayor each for three civic bodies. The civic bodies were reunified in May 2022.

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

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