BENGALURU: On a gloomy Friday afternoon, what was supposed to be a high-voltage mayoral poll drama fizzled out into a one-sided affair with the Congress, with the help of the JD(S) and independents, laying claim to the mayor’s post and electing B.N. Manjunath Reddy (Madiwala ward) to the office as the 49th mayor and Hemalatha Gopalaiah (Vrishabhavathi ward) as the 50th deputy mayor. The coalition partners cemented their claim to the coveted top posts with 131 votes.
As per the agreement between the Congress and the JD(S), the deputy mayor post went to Hemalatha Gopalaiah, wife of city JD(S) MLA, while Independents bagged the lion’s share of standing committee chairmen posts.
The BJP, which had the majority in the BBMP with 100 seats, tried but failed to get back power, as all the supporters of Congress and JD(S), except Rajya Sabha member Vijay Mallya, were present at the BBMP Council Hall.
Soon after Regional Commissioner M.V. Jayanti announced the mayoral poll procedure, Hebbal legislator R. Jagadish Kumar raised a point of order and tried to debate on the voting powers of non-corporators, like MLAs, MLCs and MPs. But Ms. Jayanti told the members that the polls were being held as per the Karnataka High Court order and carried forward with the polls.
After all the 198 corporators were sworn in, the nomination papers of Mr Manjunath Raju from the BJP and Mr Manjunath Reddy from the Congress for the mayoral elections were scrutinised.
The Congress, JD(S) and independent corporators raised their hands to support Mr Reddy which was recorded by regional commissioner. Later, the members had to sign a ledger confirming their support. The procedure was later repeated for the BJP candidate. Only then Mr Manjunath Reddy and Ms S.P. Hemalatha Gopalaiah were declared as Mayor and Deputy Mayor respectively.
Later, nominations were received for 12 various standing committees. Since only 11 nominations were filed, they were all elected unopposed. Independents bagged the chairmen’s posts of seven committees, while Congress got three and JD(S) two.
