Delhi to get Mayor on Feb 16? L-G Saxena sets date for MCD House to convene

PTI, Feb 12, 2023, 12:11 PM IST

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Delhi LG VK Saxena on Sunday gave his nod for convening the next session of the MCD House on February 16 for election to the post of mayor, official sources said on Sunday.

The government had sent the proposal to hold the House session on February 16 and Saxena has accepted it, they said.

Three successive meetings of the House in last one month were adjourned amid ruckus and commotion over decision to give voting rights to aldermen, without electing mayor, deputy mayor and members of the standing committee of the civic body.

The House was convened for the first time on January 6, after the high-stakes civic polls on December 4, and was adjourned following acrimonious exchanges between members of the BJP and the AAP.

The second municipal House held on January 24, was briefly adjourned after the oath-taking ceremony, and was later adjourned till next date by the pro tem presiding officer.

After that the House was adjourned again in February for the third time, a month after the first municipal House.

The AAP had alleged that the mayoral election could not be held as the BJP was “strangulating democracy and the Constitution of India”, while the saffron party accused the Aam Aadmi Party of coming out with excuses to stall the mayoral poll and blamed the AAP for the stalemate.

The AAP had emerged as a clear winner in the December polls, bagging 134 wards and ending the BJP’s 15-year rule in the civic body. The BJP won 104 wards to finish second, while the Congress won nine wards in the 250-member Municipal House.

The civic body in Delhi had 272 wards across its three corporations — NDMC, SDMC, and EDMC, which existed from 2012-2022 — before being reunified into a sole MCD which formally came into existence on May 22 last year.