Naresh Mahajan elected Batala MC chief

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Batala, March 9

Veteran leader Naresh Mahajan was elected president of the 35-member Municipal Committee House  here today after Batala Congress MLA Ashwani Sekhri extended support to the BJP.

Tension was thick in the air since morning when word surfaced that both parties had the requisite number to control the House of the ‘steel city’. The SSP Inderbir Singh personally monitored the situation and the entire area, in front of the SSP’s office where the MC office is located, was turned into a fortress. Hundreds of police personal were deployed to ensure that no untoward incident took place.

A potentially volatile situation was averted when SAD halqa in-charge and former MLA L.S. Lodhinangal and scores of his supporters were not allowed to enter the premises, where the election was being held. It is pertinent to mention that both the SAD and the BJP broke their alliance and had entered the electoral fray as separate entities.

The 35-member House saw the election being tied at 17-17, with a SAD councillor Rajwant Singh Tony preferring to stay away. After many anxious moments, the tie was broken when Ashwani Sekhri, who has a vote by virtue of being the MLA, voted for the BJP. His move was on expected line considering his animosity towards Lodhinangal. Sekhri had beaten Lodhinangal in the 2012 Assembly elections to become a legislator.

Earlier in the day, senior BJP leader and former Jalandhar Mayor Rakesh Rathour, who had reached Batala to oversee the election process on behalf of the BJP side, had claimed that the party would sit in the Opposition rather than being in power with the Congress support. However, as things turned out, the BJP was totally dependent on the Congress to get its man installed as the president.

Mahajan, who has served as the Batala BJP president from 2007 till 2010, found support in former councillor Harinder Singh and BJP Mandal president Raghubir Singh Randhawa. His selection as the MC president had initially run into trouble when Suresh Bhatia, the BJP president, objected to it. However, in a late night development, both Harinder Singh and Randhawa arranged a meeting between the Mahajan and the Bhatia groups where a truce was brokered.

Interestingly, four of the six Independents were sent out of town in the run-up to today’s election. They turned up at the MC office today morning, just minutes before the election took place.

Harinder Pal Singh Kalsi, a Sekhri-backed Independent, was elected the vice-president. He will act as the working president till the election of Naresh Mahajan is notified by the state government.