The BJP councillor from Jogupalya M. Goutham Kumar and Bommanahalli councillor C.R. Ramamohan Raju of the same party were elected as Bengaluru’s new Mayor and Deputy Mayor on Tuesday.
Both Mr. Kumar and Mr. Raju secured 129 votes. The Congress-Janata Dal(S) alliance fielded Dattatreya Temple councillor R.S. Sathyanarayana and Shakti Ganapathi nagar councillor Gangamma Rajanna for the Mayor and Deputy Mayor posts respectively. While Mr. Sathyanarayana secured 112 votes, Ms. Rajanna secured 116 votes.
Of the total 257 members in the electoral college, including Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs, MLAs and MLCs from the city, 249 were present.
The elections to the top posts that were held at the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in Bengaluru were contentious, as the BJP did not announce the candidates until a few hours before the polls.
The day began with confusion as two councillors from BJP — Opposition Leader Padmanabha Reddy and Mr. Kumar — filed nominations. Sources in BJP said there was hectic lobbying until the last minute. It was only after the party announced that the BJP’s Mayoral candidate was Mr. Kumar that the different factions within the party reconciled to the fact.
Despite emerging as the single largest party in the BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) council in 2015 by winning 101 seats out of 198 seats, the BJP was not able to get the post of mayor or deputy mayor as it fell short on numbers in the electoral college.
The major blow to BJP’s rivals Congress and the JD(S), which continue to have coalition in the BBMP council, was the disqualification of several of their MLAs by the then Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar earlier this year after their resignation.
The five city MLAs among them — Munirathna, S T Somashekhar, Byrathi Basavaraj, K Gopalaiah and R Roshan Baig — could not vote.
Soon after winning the election, celebration broke out at Mr. Kumar’s residence with distribution of sweets. However, there were protests too against his victory.
Pro-Kannada organisation Kannada Chalavali (Vatal Paksha) staged a protest in the city alleging that an ‘outsider’ has been made the city mayor. Mr. Kumar, who is originally from Rajasthan, hails from Jain community.
(With inputs from PTI)
