Chandigarh, Jan 30 (IANS) After the INDIA bloc's partners the Congress and AAP on Thursday faced a humiliating defeat for the Chandigarh mayor's post despite a majority to the main opposition BJP, the latter accused its partner of indulging in cross-voting.
Senior AAP leader and spokesperson Neel Garg said Congress councillors indulged in cross-voting, leading to the election of BJP's Mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla, replacing AAP's Kuldeep Kumar.
Harpreet Kaur defeated AAP's Prem Lata by two votes. The latter got 17 votes. In the 36-member House, the AAP-Congress alliance has 19 councillors -- 13 votes of AAP and six of the Congress, while the BJP has 16 votes. One vote was of Congress MP Manish Tewari, an ex-officio member of the corporation, taking its total votes to 20.
However, Congress candidates from the INDIA bloc, Jasbir Singh Bunty and Taruna Mehta, were elected as Senior Deputy Mayor, and Deputy Mayor of Chandigarh, respectively, by securing 19 votes each.
AAP's Neel Garg said the Congress councillors have betrayed them. "The Congress and the BJP are secretly in collusion. This incident has made it completely clear. Both are two sides of the same coin, " he told the media.
He said the public should not trust Congress either because if people vote for it, their councillors would later support the BJP.
He claimed the Congress would do the same in Delhi as well. "There too, they will end up supporting the BJP. Hence, voting for the Congress is equivalent to wasting one's vote, " he said.
Garg said the councillors from the Aam Aadmi Party supported the Congress. Their Deputy Mayor and Senior Deputy Mayor were elected with our votes. "But they have betrayed us, " he added.
In the run-up to the election, Congress councillor Gurbax Rawat switched sides and joined the BJP.
However, BJP's Punjab spokesperson, Pritpal Singh Baliawal, said by winning the mayoral position the BJP has exposed the Congress-AAP alliance, proving that both parties are internally united while misleading the public.
Baliawal emphasised that although the people of Punjab helped Congress win seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress-AAP alliance now stands "exposed" before the public.
He asserted that this will directly impact the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections.
He also recalled that Punjab Congress President Amarinder Singh Raja Warring had declared during the Amritsar mayoral elections that, despite the Congress and AAP being part of the INDIA bloc at the national level, the Congress had no past, present, or future association with AAP.
Hours before the mayoral polling, Chandigarh Police on Wednesday night booked Mayor Kuldeep Kumar of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and his brother-in-law Rahul on charges of cheating and corruption.
However, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday granted Kuldeep Kumar anticipatory bail, allowing him to exercise his right to franchise.
The case was registered on the complaint of a resident of Ram Darbar, who alleged that he paid Rs 75, 000 to Rahul, who had promised him a sanitation worker job. Despite making payments, he alleged he did not receive the job.