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Chandigarh: 9 nominated councillors take oath amid dissent by opposition
Both Aam Aadmi Party and Congress boycott oath-taking ceremony, alleging the nominated councillors are BJP activists masquerading as social workers
The newly appointed nine nominated councillors of the Chandigarh municipal corporation took oath on Friday amid raucous objection from the opposition parties.
Accusing the nominated councillors of being “BJP agents”, both the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress boycotted the ceremony that was held before the general House meeting. Even from the BJP, only eight of the 14 councillors were present, while Chandigarh member of Parliament Kirron Kher, an ex-officio member of the civic body, also remained absent.
The nine nominated councillors were appointed by UT administrator Banwarilal Purohit on October 18, 10 months after MC’s current five-year term started.
Protesting against their appointment, AAP councillors, who are also 14 in number in the MC House, said the administrator’s decision to nominate “BJP workers” as councillors was unfortunate, unethical, illegal and a murder of democracy.
AAP councillor Prem Lata alleged that BJP office-bearers were appointed thoughtlessly.
The six Congress councillors also sharpened their attack on the BJP, whom they accused of misleading the people of Chandigarh by masquerading political workers as social activists and hiding their real identity. “It appears that the administrator did not notice at any stage that they were not social but political activists connected with the BJP,” they alleged.
Congress councillor Gurpreet Singh Gabi said most of the nominated councillors were BJP office-bearers, while the positions should have been filled by experts from different fields to serve the interests of the citizens.
The pandemonium that continued for an hour saw nominated councillors reacting to the opposition with a challenge to the two parties to “get ready to face us”. “We have been nominated by the UT administrator and you are disrespecting the chair,” said Geeta Chauhan, a social worker and cancer survivor.
Another nominated councillor Satinder Singh Sandu, a BJP district president and a journalist, said for decades, the Congress misused its power, but now the UT administrator had appointed the right people in the civic body.
Slamming the opposition parties for their allegations, BJP councillor Harpreet Kaur Babla said such disrespect for councillors nominated by the administrator was unprecedented in the history of MC.
The councillors were administered oath by deputy commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh. Five of them took oath in Hindi, and two each in English and Punjabi.
