Ahead of Chandigarh polls, Manish Tewari pushes for direct election, 5-year tenure for Mayor
The Chandigarh mayoral election, scheduled for January 29, is set to witness a triangular contest as no candidate has withdrawn nomination so far
A day before the election of the Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Chandigarh, Congress MP Manish Tewari has urged all political parties to rise above party lines and support his initiative for a five-year tenure for the Mayor through direct elections.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Tewari said that Chandigarh will elect a Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor on Thursday. This would approximately be the 30th Mayor, 30th Senior Deputy Mayor and the 30th Deputy Mayor elected since 1996, accounting for nearly 90 office-bearers in all.
He said that while all of them were good people, they were structurally powerless and ineffectual, to put it mildly and kindly. The time, he said, had therefore come to evaluate whether the current system of electing a Mayor and his deputies for a one-year term had worked for the civic governance of Chandigarh.
“The answer clearly was that it had not worked, otherwise the Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh would not be plagued by systemic issues and endemic problems, particularly a perennial resource crunch,” said the Chandigarh MP.
He said the only way out of this morass was to transition to a system where the Mayor is directly elected by all electors of Chandigarh for a period of five years, with commensurate powers and sufficient time to do justice to his or her remit.
The Congress leader said that this was why he had moved a Private Member’s Bill in the Lok Sabha on December 5, 2025, to provide for a five-year term for the Mayor and his deputies in Chandigarh, along with consequential powers to discharge their respective responsibilities.
The election of the new Mayor of Chandigarh, scheduled to be held on Thursday, is set to be a triangular contest as no candidate has withdrawn his nomination so far.
Saurabh Joshi from the BJP, Gurpreet Singh Gabi from the Congress and Yogesh Dhingra from the AAP are contesting for the post of Mayor.
The BJP has fielded Jasmanpreet Singh for the post of Senior Deputy Mayor and Suman Sharma for Deputy Mayor. The Congress has fielded Sachin Galav for Senior Deputy Mayor and Nirmala Devi for Deputy Mayor. From the AAP, Manuar Khan is contesting for Senior Deputy Mayor and Jaswinder Kaur for Deputy Mayor.
Ramchander Yadav of the AAP is contesting independently for the post of Deputy Mayor. Two Congress councillors have proposed his name.
To win the Mayor’s election, a candidate requires 19 votes. With the joining of two councillors, the number of BJP councillors has reached 18 in the House. Presently, the Congress has six councillors and the AAP has 11 councillors. The Member of Parliament also has one vote. As a result, both the BJP and the Congress–AAP combine have 18 votes each.
In case the Congress and AAP remain firm and contest the mayoral election separately, it will be an easy win for the BJP. However, if they decide to contest jointly, the contest will become interesting. This time, the Mayor’s election will be held through a show of hands. Earlier, the election was conducted through a secret ballot, where cross-voting played a major role in close contests.
