Chandigarh: In the run-up to the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation polls, INDIA bloc partners the Congress and AAP Thursday parted ways and will be contesting the mayoral elections separately, said AAP leader Anurag Dhanda. This gives the BJP a potential edge over its rivals.
Both AAP and the Congress had joined hands in Chandigarh ahead of the 2024 mayoral polls. The alliance enabled both the parties to wrest the mayoral and Lok Sabha seats in 2024 but they lost to the BJP in the 2025 mayoral poll.
In the 35-member House, which has no anti-defection law, the BJP has 18 councillors, while there are 11 councillors of the AAP and six of the Congress.
It also has an ex-officio member, Congress MP Manish Tewari, who has voting rights.
Despite not having a clear majority, the BJP has won the mayoral election thrice in the past four years, largely banking on cross-voting members switching loyalties and horse-trading.
The AAP also announced its candidates for the January 29 elections and declared Yogesh Dhingra as the mayoral face.
It fielded Munnavar Khan as senior deputy mayor and Jaswinder Kaur as a deputy mayor. All the three candidates filed their nomination papers at the Municipal Corporation office in Sector 17 here.
However, the BJP has fielded Saurabh Joshi for the post of Mayor, while fielding Jasmanpreet Singh for the post of senior deputy mayor and Suman Sharma for the deputy mayor’s job.
The Congress has fielded Gurpreet Singh Gabi for the post of mayor, Sachin Galav for senior deputy mayor and Nirmala Devi for deputy mayor.
In a signal of either switching loyalties ahead of the polls or horse-trading, one of the AAP’s councillors, Ramchandra Yadav, filed nomination for the post of Deputy Mayor independently. Two Congress councillors proposed his name.
Unlike previous polls, the election of mayor this time will be held through a show of hands. Previously, the polls were held through a secret ballot with cross-voting and they were largely neck and neck.
Last month the BJP’s strength in the House rose to 18 as two AAP councillors — Poonam and Suman Sharma joined it.
Rejecting reports of a tie-up with the Congress, the AAP Thursday claimed the party has “looted the country”.
AAP’s Anurag Dhanda said there can never be any alliance with the Congress, days after the Grand Old Party’s leaders said that they were holding discussions with the AAP.
“There is no alliance of the Aam Aadmi Party with the Congress anywhere, nor can there ever be any alliance. The Congress has looted this country in collusion with the BJP.
“The AAP is the real voice of the common man’s struggle against these two parties that have looted the country,” Dhanda wrote in Hindi on X.
His reaction came after Chandigarh Congress President Harmohinder Singh Lucky said “talks were on” with the AAP to “block the BJP”.
IANS
