The opposition’s INDIA bloc is brain dead, BJP leader Pralhad Joshi said on Tuesday, after his party crushed the AAP-Congress coalition in the Chandigarh mayoral elections. Reacting to the defeat despite having enough seats in the council, the Arvind Kejriwal-led party called the BJP triumph “a broad daylight robbery” and “treason”.
चंडीगढ़ मेयर चुनाव में दिन दहाड़े जिस तरह से बेईमानी की गई है, वो बेहद चिंताजनक है। यदि एक मेयर चुनाव में ये लोग इतना गिर सकते हैं तो देश के चुनाव में तो ये किसी भी हद तक जा सकते हैं। ये बेहद चिंताजनक है।
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 30, 2024
According to BJP head JP Nadda, the BJP triumph demonstrated that the INDIA bloc’s arithmetic and chemistry were ineffective.
“That the INDI alliance fought their first electoral battle and still lost to BJP shows that neither their arithmetic is working nor their chemistry,” he wrote on X.
Punjab BJP leader Jaiveer Shergill called the AAP-Congress alliance a thugbandhan (an alliance of thugs).
“BJP’s victory in the election is a victory of democracy and the defeat of the ‘thugbandhan‘ (an alliance of thugs) of Congress and AAP. BJP’s victory is the victory of truth over lies, of the politics of service to the nation over the politics of corruption,” said BJP leader Jaiveer Shergill.
BJP candidate Manoj Sonkar defeated the AAP candidate in the Chandigarh assembly elections.
Reacting to Arvind Kejriwal’s accusation that the BJP cheated to secure the victory, Sonkar said levelling allegations is the alliance’s main job.
“Levelling allegations is their (AAP-Congress) job. Wherever they don’t have their way, they level allegations…Everything is on camera. But when they couldn’t digest their defeat, they created this atmosphere and started blaming us. They started tearing ballot papers and jostling people around after the name of the Mayor was announced…When they can’t run a small city, how can they run a state?…Let them do a press conference, we are not wrong. We have won the election,” he said.
Meanwhile, AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said the BJP victory was a broad daylight robbery.
“In Chandigarh, the BJP has 14 councillors, while the AAP and Congress have 13 and 7 councillors, respectively. Akali Dal, meanwhile, has just one councillor. The AAP-Congress alliance had 20 councillors while the BJP-Akali Dal combine had 15 councillors. The AAP-Congress alliance clearly had a majority. There was no question that the BJP could win this,” he claimed.
AAP MP Raghav Chadha said the victory is illegal and unconstitutional.
“This was not just an unconstitutional and illegal thing but also a treason. Whatever happened today during the mayoral elections in Chandigarh can only be called a treason,” he said.
Chadha claimed the BJP employed illegal tactics to win the mayoral elections.
“For the first time in the Chandigarh mayoral elections, 8 out of the 36 votes were declared invalid. The Congress and AAP alliance had to get 20 votes. We got 12 votes and 8 were declared invalid. Not a single vote of the BJP was declared invalid,” said Chadha.
According to the alliance’s agreement, the AAP competed for the mayoral position, while the Congress competed for deputy mayor and senior deputy mayor.
Rajinder Kumar, the BJP candidate, was later chosen as deputy mayor when AAP and Congress councillors declined to vote.
The Aam Aadmi Party has petitioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court over the BJP’s win.
Manoj Sonkar received 16 votes, while AAP’s Kuldeep Kumar received 12. Eight votes were deemed invalid.
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Source: HT
