BJP Wins Chandigarh Mayoral Polls

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Manoj Sonkar won the Chandigarh mayoral elections on Tuesday. It also won the deputy mayoral and senior deputy mayoral polls, after a boycott by the AAP and Congress that alleged “unfair” means. Notably, eight votes of the INDIA bloc were declared invalid.

Considering that Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has refused to share seats with Congress for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, this was the first election where the grand old party and AAP, had agreed to contest together making it a big step towards building confidence.

Sonkar was declared the winner with 16 votes, while the BJP had a total of 14 + 1 votes. The last one voted perhaps belonged to the Shiromani Akali Dal. The AAP and Congress had 13 and seven votes each, but got a total of 12 votes after eight were declared invalid.

Soon after the results were declared, AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal alleged that the mayoral elections in the union territory, which is the capital of Punjab and Haryana, were conducted in an “unfair manner”.

“The unfair manner and dishonesty in broad daylight in the Chandigarh mayor elections is extremely worrying. If these people can stoop so low in a mayor’s election, they can go to any extent in the country’s elections. This is very worrying,” he said in a post on X.

AAP MP Sandeep Pathak also alleged “dishonesty” in the Chandigarh mayoral election, calling it “deeply concerning”. “…If these malpractices can occur in a local election, it raises serious questions about the integrity of our national elections. This is extremely alarming and calls for a thorough examination of our electoral processes,” he said in a post on X.