The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Harpreet Kaur Babla has won the Chandigarh mayoral election. In the voting held on on Thursday, January 30, Babla won by securing 19 votes in the 36-member House. Prem Lata, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate backed by the Congress, received 17 votes.
The elections for the posts of Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor were held in the assembly hall of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation. The AAP and Congress contested the mayoral elections as an alliance. While AAP contested the Mayor's post, Congress has put up its candidates -- Jasbir Singh Bunty and Taruna Mehta -- for the posts of Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor, respectively. The AAP had fielded its councillor Prem Lata for the Mayor's post.
The BJP had 16 councillors, while the Congress had 6, and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had 13 councillors. In addition to the councillors, Manish Tiwari, the MP from Chandigarh, was also granted voting rights in this election as a nominated member of the Municipal Corporation. In the 2024 mayoral elections, AAP's Kuldeep Kumar was declared the mayor of the Chandigarh MC by the Supreme Court on February 20 last year, after overturning the result of the Chandigarh mayoral poll in which the BJP candidate had been declared the winner. The then presiding officer, Anil Masih, was caught on camera invalidating eight ballot papers that were in favour of the AAP-Congress alliance.