With the elections for mayors and ward councillors over, Madhya Pradesh is gearing up for the election of municipal corporation chairpersons scheduled on August 5.
Cross voting fears in these indirect elections purportedly have led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to send its Gwalior councillors to Haryan . Meanwhile, the Congress has sent a batch of 32 Morena councillors (19 of its own and at least 13 others supporting it) to Rajasthan.
Both these groups left on Tuesday and are expected to return on election day or by late Thursday evening.
In the municipal elections whose results were announced last month, the BJP had lost the mayoral seat – contested through direct elections – in Gwalior after 57 years, with the Congress’ Shobha Shikarwar trouncing its candidate Suman Sharma by nearly 29,000 votes. Despite losing the mayoral seat, the BJP has 34 councillors in the corporation, which gives it a simple majority. The Congress, which has 25 councillors, is learnt to have reached out to the Independents and Bahujan Samaj Party to boost its strength apart from sending feelers to the BJP councillors.
In Morena, another mayoral seat in the Gwalior-Chambal belt that the BJP lost to Congress, the Congress has claimed the support of 31 councillors in the 47-member house. Unlike Gwalior, it’s a multipolar contest there. Neither the BJP nor the Congress are near the majority mark of 24 councillors in the corporation. Soon after the swearing in of the newly elected mayor Sharda Solanki and the councillors, the Congress had reportedly called bouncers from Delhi to “protect” 32 councillors (19 of its own and rest fom the BSP and a few Independents) supporting its candidate.
Both the camps, however, denied any poaching fears. BJP State president V.D. Sharma played down the party ferrying its Gwalior councillors (along with the spouses of the women councillors) out of Madhya Pradesh and said that they had gone to meet senior party leaders in Delhi. Ashok Singh, State Congress vice-president and a senior party leader from Gwalior, said party councillors had gone to Rajasthan (a Cong.-ruled State) for religious sightseeing.
