Fresh faces form majority in new MC

Cong wins 11 seats, BJP 10 & SAD 2; 10 candidates are women; biggest margin 2,779 votes 

Chandigarh, December 19
In an important development, the municipal corporation (MC) got 16 fresh faces out of the 26 elected to the fourth House since its inception in 1996. More interestingly, it was the loss of heavyweights of the two prominent parties -- the Congress and the BJP -- which paved way for fresh blood.

The Congress remained the top seat gatherer with 11 seats. The BJP is a close second with 10 seats while two seats have gone to its ally, the SAD. The Congress has got four seats less compared to its previous tally in the outgoing House while the BJP has got four more than its previous figure.

The 16 new faces are Raj Bala Malik (Cong), Saurabh Joshi (BJP), Asha Kumari Jaswal (BJP), Sat Prakash Aggarwal (Cong), Laxmi Devi (BJP), Arun Sood (BJP), Gurbax Rawat (Cong), Darshan Kumar (Cong), Kashmiri Devi (Cong), Satinder Singh (BJP), Naresh Kumar (BSP), Satish Kumar (Cong), Heera Negi (BJP), Davesh Modgil (BJP), Jannat Jahan (BSP) and Rajinder Kaur (BJP).

The old ones who were successful in grabbing the seats are Pardeep Chabbra (Congress), Subhash Chawla (Congress), Malkiat Singh (SAD), Sheela Devi (Congress), Harphool Chander Kalyan (Congress), Harjinder Kaur (SAD), Rajesh Kumar Gupta (BJP), Gurcharan Dass Kala (Independent) and Des Raj Gupta (BJP). The swearing-in ceremony of the new House will be held on January 1.

Interestingly, among all the fresh faces, at least six have routed the “armies” of the old heavyweights who were “well entrenched in city politics”. The highest victory margin of 2,417 is by a new face Darshan Kumar (Congress) was in Ward No. 11 who unseated the BJP sitting councillor Anil Kumar Dubey. The lowest victory margin of the first-timer is of Davesh Modgil from Ward No. 22 with a margin of 261 votes against Congress sitting councillor Jatinder Bhatia.

The BSP bagged two seats and Gurcharan Das Kala, a former BJP Mayor, was the only Independent to win the corporation elections. He is the first Independent councillor to win the election ever. The Chandigarh Vikas Manch, which was originally floated by a senior BJP leader and had bagged four seats last time, did not contest the polls this year.

As many as 10 candidates out of the total 26 are women.

As per data available with the election department, the highest number of 7,702 votes were polled by the oldest Congress candidate, Kashmiri Devi Rana, from Ward No. 14. She also won by the highest margin of 2,779 votes, 944 more than the highest margin during the last elections in 2006. The lowest victory margin was in Ward No. 21, where BJP candidate Heera Negi won by 120 votes, which is 100 votes more than the lowest margin in the last elections.

The lowest number of votes -- only 2,933 -- were polled by Sat Prakash Aggarwal of the Congress who won from Ward No. 6.