In a setback to the INDIA bloc, comprising the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress, the BJP won both the senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor seats in Chandigarh on Monday.

BJP’s Kuljeet Singh Sandhu won the elections for senior deputy mayor of Chandigarh, securing 19 votes. He defeated INDIA bloc candidate Gurpreet Singh Gabi, who got 16 votes. One vote was declared invalid.

Rajendra Kumar Sharma won the deputy mayor post, getting 19 votes, while the INDIA bloc’s Nirmala Devi secured 17 votes.

In the 35-member Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, the BJP had 14 seats but its strength was boosted on February 19 when three Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillors joined it.

The three former AAP councillors are Punam Devi, Neha Musawat, and Gurcharan Kala. They joined the BJP in the presence of party national general secretary Vinod Tawde in Delhi.

The lone SAD councillor, who had support BJP in the mayor polls, boycotted the elections on Monday due to Chandigarh BJP president Jatinder Pal Malhotra’s anti-farmer tweet.

Newly appointed mayor Kuldeep Kumar Dhalor (from AAP) was the presiding authority for both elections.

Reacting to the result, Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar said, “The whole problem is not of mayor and deputy mayor, the problem lies in the coalition of the AAP and the Congress in Punjab. They are misleading people of Punjab… BJP has numbers. But whatever it is should happen systematically.”

Earlier, the Supreme Court declared Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Kuldeep Kumar as the winner of the Chandigarh mayoral polls.

This came after the order of the apex court on the mayoral polls found that the returning officer had deliberately defaced eight ballots that were cast in favour of Kuldeep Kumar to make them invalid.

A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra quashed the decision by returning officer Anil Masih, who declared BJP candidate Manoj Kumar Sonkar as Chandigarh mayor on January 30.

The apex court physically examined the ballot papers and found that they were not defaced. It directed that Kuldeep Kumar be declared as the mayor with 20 votes (12 votes which he received and 8 which were for him and were defaced by Masih).

The Supreme Court further directed the registrar, judicial, to issue notice to Masih for perjury proceedings under Section 340 CrPC for making a false statement before the court that the mark was made on eight ballots as they were defaced. The bench slammed Masih saying he had “unlawfully altered the course of the mayoral election”.