House to Elect, Mayor and Deputy Mayor in Delhi MCD Mayoral Election 2023
The civic body has tried twice to elect its first single mayor in ten years since the merger of its three divisions last year.
Weeks after the first session was called to adjourn due to a fracas between the AAP and the BJP, the municipal House will reconvene on Tuesday to pick the mayor and deputy mayor of Delhi following the recent high-stakes civic elections in the nation’s capital. After a ten-year hiatus, Delhi will finally have a mayor for the entire city following the mayoral election.
In the midst of raucous protests by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors over the presiding officer’s choice to administer oath to the 10 aldermen first, the 250-member MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) House’s first meeting on January 6 was adjourned without electing the mayor and the deputy mayor. According to the MCD’s schedule, House business will get underway at 11 am.
The Lt. Governor-appointed alderman would take the oath first, according to presiding officer Satya Sharma, despite the AAP’s vehement resistance at the previous meeting.
Council members and members selected in accordance with the DMC Act, 1957 (amended in 2022), will take the oath, according to the agenda for the meeting on January 24. The order in which the oaths are taken is not, however, specified.
The civic elections were held on December 4, and the results were tallied on December 7. By winning 134 wards and breaking the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 15-year hegemony in the civic body, the AAP was declared the election’s undisputed victor. The Congress won nine seats, and the BJP won 104 awards to finish in second place. Ashu Thakur and Shelly Oberoi are the AAP’s mayoral candidates. Rekha Gupta is the nominee from the BJP.
The candidates for the position of deputy mayor are Kamal Bagri, Aaley Mohammad Iqbal, and Jalaj Kumar (AAP) (BJP). Six members of the MCD standing committee will also be chosen during the municipal House in addition to the mayor and deputy mayor. In the nation’s capital, the position of mayor is filled by rotation for five one-year terms, with the first year reserved for women, the second for open candidates, the third for candidates in a reserved category, and the final two again for candidates in the open category.
This year, Delhi will have a female mayor. 250 council members, 7 Lok Sabha, 3 Rajya Sabha, and 14 MLAs selected by the Legislative Assembly are eligible to vote for the mayor. One BJP MLA and 13 AAP MLAs have been nominated by the Speaker of the Delhi Assembly to the MCD.