Goyal in the saddle

Amit Bathla

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, December 30

BJP’s Kulbhushan Goyal was today elected the new Mayor of Panchkula. He defeated Congress candidate Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia by 2,057 votes.

While 49,860 votes were polled in favour of Goyal, Ahluwalia got 47,803 votes.

Four more candidates for the mayoral post – Anil Pangotra from the BSP (2,378 votes), Padam Garg as an Independent (887 votes), Shyam Singh Negi as an Independent (667 votes) and Sudershan Bansal fromthe Janral Samaj Party (840 votes) – lost their security deposits.

As many as 1,333 voters opted for NOTA.

The BJP-JJP alliance secured a majority in the Municipal Corporation House by winning 11 councillor seats.

Nine seats were won by the BJP, while the JJP, which contested on four seats, won two. The Congress managed to grab seven seats.

Two Independents were also elected councillors – one from ward number 11 and the other from ward number 19.

A total of 89 candidates – six for the mayoral post and 83 for the posts of councillor – were in the fray for the Panchkula Municipal Corporation elections.

However, the posts of Senior Deputy Mayor, Deputy Mayor and the Vice-President will be filled as per the previous practice — indirect election.

Of the 1,85,708 registered voters in Panchkula, 1,03,768 (55.88 per cent) had exercised their franchise on December 27. More than two years after a row over the bifurcation of the Panchkula civic body began in 2018, the Haryana Government, in July this year, had given its approval for the separation of the Kalka and Pinjore areas from the limits of the Panchkula Municipal Corporation and the constitution of the Kalka Municipal Council.

The first elections to the Panchkula Municipal Corporation were held in 2013, when Congress-backed Independent candidates won a majority of the seats.

In the previous MC elections, only three BJP candidates — CB Goel, Sunil Talwar and Ravi Kant Swamy — had won. Later, Swamy had also joined the Congress. However, the party got its tally back to three after Krishna Lamba, a Congress councillor, switched to the BJP. Back then, the selection of the Mayor used to be indirect unlike now.

Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia was chosen as the Panchkula’s first Mayor and she completed her five-year term until the MC House was dissolved.