Balwant Rai elected mayor unopposed

Gurdeep Singh Mann

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, March 9

Contrary to the precedent of conducting elections with secret ballot, this time, the voting for the post of the mayor, senior deputy mayor and the deputy mayor was held with a show of hands in the first meeting.

Balwant Rai Nath was elected unopposed as mayor, Tarsem Goyal as senior deputy mayor and Gurinderpal Kaur Mangat is elected as deputy mayor.

Congress councillors stated that the ruling SAD-BJP did not choose the secret ballot procedure fearing ‘against-voting’ by their own councillors in view of seeking mayoral posts by numerous groups.

The SAD-BJP, however, claimed that ever since notification of 2001 the ‘show of hands’ procedure is adopted to choose the mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor. Nobody from the Congress or independent candidates came forward to oppose the names proposed by the SAD and the BJP councillors for the three posts.

Though initially, Jasvir Kaur of the Congress proposed the name of Jagraj Singh for the post of mayor which was endorsed by Nirmal Kaur and Malkit Gill but Jagroop Gill urged to withdraw his name to maintain the benignity of the house.

The name of Balwant Rai Nath was proposed by master Harmandar Sidhu and was endorsed by Nirmal Sandhu and Santosh Mahant. Nobody objected or raised hands against the names proposed for the posts.

The senior most councillor Jagroop Gill of the Congress party said that apart from the show of hands, the convening of first meeting is ought to be done by a senior councillor. Last time, too, the first meeting was convened by Bhupinder Bhullar, who was the senior most councillor at that time.

“Despite the fact that I am the senior most councillor this time, the task (of convening the first meeting) was assigned to former mayor Baljeet Singh Beerbehman,” Gill said. He added that though he ignored the fact in larger public interest and decided not to waste the precious time of the house for such petty things.

During the 1992 elections, when senior councillor Jagroop Gill (then independent) was elected as the president of the council, the procedure of secret ballot was adopted. Though the Congress party, at that time, had a majority of 15 councillors, due to the secret ballot procedure, nobody knew who favoured the votes against the party. Despite not having too many supporters, Jagroop Gill became the president at that time despite having 14 councillors who openly supported him. Surprisingly, all the 15 councillors showed their unity by arriving in the meeting from the Lake View Guest House together and even left in a similar manner at the same place. To counter the problems related to secret ballot, this time, the procedure of show of hands has been adopted by the government since 2001.