india

Updated: Oct 01, 2019 21:31 IST

Bharatiya Janata Party’s councillor M Goutham Kumar was on Tuesday elected the mayor of Bengaluru and CR Ramamohan Raju was elected deputy mayor as the saffron party came to power in the city for the first time in four years.

Mayoral polls are held every year, although councillors enjoy a term of five years. The BJP had been kept out of power in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the city’s civic body, over the past four years because of a coalition between the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) at the local level.

However, this coalition fell apart after the alliance government run by the two parties and headed by former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy collapsed in July. This allowed the BJP to take advantage of the fact that it had won the highest number of councillor seats in the 2015 elections to the civic body.

The Electoral College for the polls includes five Lok Sabha MPs, 9 Rajya Sabha MPs, 23 MLAs, 22 MLCs and 198 councillors, totalling 257 members. Five rebels from the coalition, who had been disqualified in July, were deleted from the rolls.

In the poll, Kumar and Raju secured 129 votes each, much higher than their rivals form the coalition parties, out of a possible 241 votes as eight members did not turn up and eight other votes were considered invalid.

The elections were held on Tuesday, despite chief minister BS Yediyurappa ordering on Monday that they be postponed, a decision that was disregarded by Bengaluru division regional commissioner Harsh Gupta.

However, despite enjoying considerable advantages the BJP faced some embarrassing moments after two councillors filed nominations for the mayor’s post. Kumar and Padmanabha Reddy, who was the Opposition Leader in the council both filed nominations. Reddy, eventually withdrew his nomination after the party backed Kumar.

Speaking to the media, Kumar, who is the 53rd mayor of the city said after the victory, “I want to make Bengaluru traffic and garbage-free. I will move towards development through consultation with everybody.”

Chief minister Yediyurappa expressed happiness at the outcome. “Yes, I had tried to postpone the polls. However, the officials convinced me that it should go on and it was good in a way because we won both posts,” he said. “Corruption had run riot in Bengaluru and we have initiated many probes, and the truth should come out and the guilty should be punished,” he added.

Many from the Congress were missing on the day, like former union minister Jairam Ramesh, who is an RS MP, and brothers DK Shivakumar, who is in ED custody and DK Suresh.

A Congress leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Congress could still have pulled off a victory if it desired. “Couple of things worked against us, like the lack of interest and the fight between [former chief minister] Siddaramaiah and senior leaders of the JD(S),” he said.

Even then, the party had a tough task as many Congress councillors close to the disqualified rebel MLAs were expected to vote in favour of the BJP. As it stood the BJP had the support of 125 members, the coalition had the support of 125 members and there were seven independent councillors.

“Of the independents only two voted for the BJP,” the Congress leader said. “If the party had wanted to win this election we would have ensured that many of those who did not turn up would have attended the vote,” the leader added.

However, as it stood, the Congress candidate R Sathyanarayana could muster only 112 votes.