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Delhi mayoral polls: Cong demands full term for Dalit mayor, to boycott voting
The party said it wanted the new mayor, a Dalit, to serve a full one-year term, instead of the truncated one that will end in April next year.
The Congress declared on Thursday it will boycott the mayoral elections in Delhi, on a day when voting for both the mayor and deputy mayor is to be held in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).
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The party said it wanted the new mayor, a Dalit, to serve a full one-year term, instead of the truncated one that will end in April next year.
“We will attend the House but abstain from voting. We want the Dalit mayor to get a full tenure, instead of just four months,” PTI quoted a Congress councillor as saying on the condition of anonymity.
The national capital's new mayor will be from the Dalit community. This is because as per MCD rules, mayoral elections are held annually in April for a five-year tenure comprising as many single-year tenures on a rotation basis.
The first year is for women, the second for the open category, the third for the reserved category, and the last two again for the open category.
These will be the third mayoral polls after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which runs the government in Delhi, ended 15 years at the helm of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in MCD in December 2022. The AAP duo of Shelly Oberoi and Aaley Mohammed Iqbal are the outgoing mayor and deputy respectively, and have held the posts since February 2023.
Therefore, the new mayor will be a Dalit and hold the post only till April 2025. The ‘infighting’ between the AAP and BJP led to the delay in conducting the elections, originally scheduled for April.
The AAP has fielded Mahesh Khichi, the councillor from Devnagar, for mayor, and Ravinder Bharadwaj, the Aman Vihar councillor, for the deputy post. On the other hand, the BJP's nominees are Kishan Lal (mayor) and Nita Bisht (deputy).
