Raja Iqbal Singh is Delhi’s new mayor, says his priority is to clean up city in 3 months

Raja Iqbal Singh, a two-term councillor from Mukherjee Nagar ward, had previously served as the mayor of the erstwhile North MCD in 2021-22

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday reclaimed power in the capital’s municipal corporation, with the party’s Raja Iqbal Singh, 54, elected as Delhi’s next mayor.

Raja Iqbal Singh was elected Delhi mayor with 133 votes in his favour against 8 votes secured by the Congress candidate. The AAP, which has 119 councillors, abstained from the election. (PTI)

Singh’s election, and the BJP’s return to power after losing the civic body elections in November 2022, was a formality since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had announced that it would boycott the mayoral election. The AAP lost its majority in the MCD following a series of defections to the BJP after its victory in the Delhi Assembly elections in February.

Raja Iqbal Singh secured 133 votes against the Congress candidate, Mandeep Singh, the Nangloi councillor, who got 8 votes, the Congress’s total strength in the elected body.

Raja Iqbal Singh, a two-term councillor from Mukherjee Nagar ward (previously GTB Nagar), had previously served as the mayor of the erstwhile North MCD in 2021-22 before the North, South, and East Delhi municipal corporations merged into one entity on May 22, 2022.

Raja Iqbal Singh said the BJP would aggressively work to improve sanitation services and other infrastructure projects pending for a long time.

“Delhi has been turned into a garbage dump. My priority is to clean the city over the next three months. People will see a sharp change in civic services,” he added. Singh also promised to withdraw the garbage user charge that was recently imposed and expedite the formation of the standing committee. The non-formation of the key panel led to policy paralysis in the corporation over the last 2.5 years.

At the municipal corporation on Friday, the proceedings started with a condolence resolution for the victims of the deadly terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 people.

The voting process for the mayoral election took about 90 minutes, after which the results were announced by the presiding officer Satya Sharma.

Following its defeat in the mayoral election, the Congress withdrew its deputy mayor candidate, leading to the unopposed election of the BJP candidate Jai Bhagwan Yadav.

With this change in power in MCD, the BJP is now in power at the municipal, state and central which it has earlier referred to as the ‘triple engine’ government.

The BJP has promised that the pace of development projects will accelerate under such an arrangement. One of the first challenges for the newly elected mayor would be to prevent waterlogging in the coming monsoon while dealing with the sanitation crisis in the city.