Mayoral polls: AICC sends Chaudhary to state to keep flock together
The Congress leadership has appointed senior leader Harish Chaudhary with preventing defections in the party ahead of the mayoral polls in Punjab’s five Municipal Corporations.
Chaudhary, a former All India Congress Committee (AICC) incharge for Punjab affairs, landed in Amritsar on Wednesday.
The development has come a day after the state government notified the elections to five Municipal Corporations of Amrisar, Jalandhar, Patiala, Ludhiana and Phagwara.
The elections will have to be held within a month of the notification.
A senior party leader said the Congress is hopeful of proving its majority in the Amritsar and Phagwara Municipal Corporations.
Barring Patiala and Jalandhar, where Punjab’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has managed to muster enough numbers, none of the political parties in Punjab has an absolute majority in the rest three municipal bodies.
In Ludhiana, AAP won 41 seats, Congress 30, BJP 19, and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) two. Three seats were won by Independents.
In Amritsar, as four Independent councillors joined the AAP upsetting the Congress calculations in the MC House, which has 85 members.
Ruling AAP has 28 members in the MC and needs seven more votes to prove majority in the area as local five legislators also have the right to vote in the election due to being ex-officio members of the MC.
In the 50-ward Phagwara Municipal Corporation, the Congress claimed to have touched the required numbers. AAP, with just 12 councillors, too has claimed to have the required numbers.
