Huge mandate comes with high expectations

Nitin Jain

THE voters of Chandigarh have given their mandate, and now, it is over to the newly-elected municipal councillors. Chandigarhians have voted for the BJP which recorded an unprecedented landslide victory by winning 20 of the 22 MC seats it fought. Its alliance partner SAD, however, managed to win only one of the four seats it contested. The Congress faced decimation by getting only 4 seats while others, the BSP, Left and the Independents, found no place to sit in the new MC House. The lone winner, Independent candidate, Dalip Sharma, is also a BJP rebel.

Whether it was a vote for NaMo or stamp of approval on DeMo, something the saffron party’s top leadership claims but the main Opposition Congress vehemently dismisses, the task is cut out for the BJP-SAD alliance having a two-third majority in the new House. They have no choice but to do what the Chandigarhians want, finish the unfinished agenda, and come up to the expectations of the people. After winning the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, this is the second big and consecutive win for the saffron party in the City Beautiful.

With everyone right from top to bottom on their side, the newly-elected BJP-SAD councillors would have no one to blame if they fail to discharge their duties. From MP to PM, all are from BJP, and this should make their task easy and goals achievable. They are left with no option but to perform. 

With bijli, sadak and pani – the three basic civic amenities – still remaining below the mark in India’s first planned city, the new MC House should raise the level and standard of the three services by ensuring uninterrupted power and water supply and pothole-free and well-lit roads and streets.

If at all these need a reminder, ensuring cleanliness, coping with ever-increasing vehicular traffic, reducing the pain of parking pangs, checking mushrooming vendors, removing illegal encroachments and providing efficient and time-bound public delivery system pose quite a challenge.

How saffronist councillors and their local and national leaders take this rather unexpected landslide victory and how much they live up to the people’s expectations, only time will tell. But the newly elected councilors will be doing themselves a service to keep in mind that if voters have made you this time, they can also break you the next time, should you fail to deliver.