chandigarh

Updated: Dec 21, 2016 01:42 IST

The Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiromani Akali Dal alliance recorded a landslide victory in the Chandigarh municipal corporation elections by winning 20 out of 26 seats on Tuesday.

The Congress, on the other hand, managed to win only 4 seats. One seat went to Independent candidate Dalip Sharma from Ward No 19.

This is the first time in the history of municipal elections that the Congress has tasted such a defeat.

As many as 13 first timers from the BJP won the elections that were held on Sunday.

Read | Highlights of the Chandigarh MC polls results: BJP wins 20 seats, Congress win 4 seats

City mayor and BJP candidate Arun Sood defeated his Congress rival Rajesh Sharma from Ward No 8 with a margin of over 2,000 votes.

Sood said it was demonetisation and development that helped his party win 20 seats. Moreover, the negative campaign of Congress also turned the tide in favour of BJP, he added.

It was a day of upsets for Congress as one heavyweight after another lost the elections. Congress candidate and two-time mayor Subhash Chawla lost from Ward No 16, Ritu Chhabra wife of Chandigarh Congress chief Pardeep Chhabra lost from Ward No 3, former mayor Poonam Sharma lost from Ward No 4 and another ex-mayor Harphool Chander Kalyan also lost.

Surprisingly, the Congress candidate Devinder Singh Babla won in Ward No 18 by a margin of 807 votes by defeating BJP candidate Saurabh Joshi. Gurbax Rawat of Congress won the seat for the second time from Ward No 9 and defeated SAD candidate Inderjeet Kaur by 2,128 votes.

Congress chief Chhabra accused the BJP of winning the elections by tampering with the electronic voting machines.

“It is not possible that we will lose all seats. We will take legal help and write to the state election commission,” he said.