Manish Sisodia, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), referred to municipal commissioner Ashwani Kumar’s election notice for the open Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) standing committee seat as “illegal” on Friday and declared that his party would abstain from the process. He maintained that an elected corporate meeting cannot be presided over by a bureaucrat.
Sisodia compared Kumar to Anil Masih, the returning officer who helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the Chandigarh mayoral election on January 30 after he was caught on camera tampering with ballots. In February, the Supreme Court ruled that the AAP candidate had won after overturning the results of the mayoral votes.
According to Delhi BJP chief Virender Sachdeva, the AAP is running away from the poll for the open seat even though it has a majority in the MCD. He stated that AAP was accountable for the “murder of democracy” as critical committees had not been created over 21 months after the MCD polls.
“AAP, Arvind Kejriwal, and Manish Sisodia are murdering the democracy in MCD. You won the election…you have the majority still you are not letting the MCD elections take place. From the appointment of aldermen, zonal committee election, and the standing committee, courts have been forced to intervene to help MCD operate. Why are you running away from elections? They do not even trust their councillors,” Sachdeva stated.
Despite an eight-hour standoff, three adjournments, demonstrations, and Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena’s intervention, the election for the final standing committee member remained unresolved on Thursday. The Municipal Secretariat’s decree prohibiting cell phones in the chamber was challenged by the AAP.
Invoking the rarely used Delhi Municipal Corporation Act Section 487, Saxena demanded that the elections be finished by Thursday. If Mayor Shelly Oberoi is unable or unwilling to lead the meeting for the holding of the election, Deputy Mayor Aaley Iqbal may be asked to do so, according to him. In the event that both members were reluctant or unable to perform, Saxena permitted the senior member to do so.
In a report that was delivered to Saxena late on Thursday, the municipal commissioner claimed that Oberoi had once more declined to oversee the poll. Iqbal and the most senior AAP councillor, Mukesh Goel, remained silent.
At around one in the morning, Saxena gave the order for the standing committee seat election to take place on Friday at one in the afternoon, with additional commissioner Jitender Yadav presiding over it.
Sisodia claimed Saxena instructed MCD commissioner to hold elections and the whole night the BJP councillors were present there, while those of AAP and Congress were absent. “Now, they want to conduct the election by 1pm under the supervision of additional commissioner of MCD. What Masih did in the Chandigarh mayoral elections, the same is being done. MCD commissioner is like Masih.”
One important body that manages MCD’s budget is the standing committee. For nearly two years, it has been the focal point of a legal and political battle between the BJP and AAP. Out of 18 standing committee members, 12 are elected by zonal ward committees. The remaining six are directly elected by the House of Councillors. In the standing committee, the AAP has eight members and the BJP nine.
After winning the Lok Sabha elections, BJP councillor Kamaljeet Sehrawat resigned, leaving the seat empty.