BJP's Pravesh Wahi elected MCD mayor

BJP councillor from Rohini East, Pravesh Wahi, was elected mayor of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Wednesday. Wahi secured 156 votes, with 14 councillors of the Indraprastha Vikas Party backing him. Congress candidate Hazi Zaraf received nine votes. BJP councillor from Anand Vihar, Monika Pant, was elected deputy mayor with 156 votes. Jai Bhagwan Yadav from Begumpur and Manish Chadha from Paharganj were elected to the standing committee from the BJP, while AAP councillor Jalaj Chaudhary from Shalimar Bagh was also elected to the MCD panel. On being elected mayor, Wahi thanked Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and the BJP leadership, saying, ''We will clean Delhi in the coming months. We will work for the development of Delhi.'' The electoral college for this year's mayoral election comprised 273 votes, including 249 councillors, 14 MLAs nominated by the Delhi Assembly, seven Lok Sabha MPs and three Rajya Sabha members from Delhi. A candidate required 137 votes to win. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) abstained from the mayoral polls. Earlier, the party's Delhi unit president Saurabh Bharadwaj said in a statement that the move would allow the BJP to take charge of the civic body and help AAP ''expose'' the ruling party on governance. ''Despite having power at all levels, the BJP has failed to bring about any change in Delhi. The BJP does not know how to perform. Only AAP knows how to work,'' Bharadwaj said. Earlier, AAP controlled the mayoral post, with Mahesh Kumar Khinchi winning the election in November 2024 by just three votes. The three civic bodies -- East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) -- were reunified into a single entity on May 22, 2022, as the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

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