Congress corporator Sampath Raj on Thursday became the 51st mayor of Bengaluru unopposed as the Bharatiya Janata Party boycotted the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike elections. Padmavathi Narasimhamurthy of the Congress party’s coalition partner Janata Dal (Secular) became the deputy mayor.
While Raj won the elections with 139 votes, Narasimhamurthy received 138 votes.
This year, the post of the Bengaluru mayor was reserved for a candidate from a scheduled caste, and the deputy mayor’s was reserved for women from the general category, PTI reported. The tenure for both is for 11 months.
In the BBMP elections, MLAs, MPs and MLCs who live in Bengaluru are eligible to vote. The BJP had approached the Election Commission, alleging that there were several voters on the list who were not eligible to cast their votes as they were not residents of the city, The NewsMinute reported.
Muniswamy and Mamatha Vasudeva had contested for the post of mayor and deputy mayor for the BJP. However, neither leader got a single vote.
“The BJP knew they would lose, so they did this,” the general secretary of the Congress’ IT Cell, Niranjan Kumar, told NDTV.
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