In a closely contested fight, the INDIA bloc's Congress-AAP alliance on Thursday failed to win the election to the Chandigarh mayor's post, owing to cross-voting by three councillors, while the BJP's Harpreet Kaur Babla was elected the new incumbent.
Harpreet Kaur Babla got 19 votes, while her nearest rival AAP candidate Prem Lata got 17 votes.
There was a straight contest between the AAP's Prem Lata and the BJP's Harpreet Kaur Babla.
Harpreet Kaur Babla as the new mayor is expected to bank mainly on enhancing urban development and other key civic issues to improve the quality of life for residents.
BJP Chandigarh vice president Devinder Singh Babla, whose wife was the newly elected mayor, has credited the party's strategy and the performance of outgoing AAP Mayor Kuldeep Kumar for the win.
"We were confident that this will indeed happen. Mayor Kuldeep Kumar made up for everything else that remained. He showed that he was looting the corporation. We will get that enquired," said Devinder Singh Babla.
In the run-up to the polls, the Congress' senior woman councillor Gurbax Rawat defected and crossed over to the BJP.
BJP leader Sanjay Tandon reacted to the defeat of the INDIA bloc, saying to the media, "Where was their (INDIA bloc) majority? I don't think they ever had one. They chose BJP for the betterment of Chandigarh."
This time the seat, with a tenure of a year, was reserved for women.
The AAP-Congress alliance held 19 of the 35 councillors, which included 13 from AAP and six from Congress. BJP was left with a mere 16 votes.
The alliance of one year relied on one vote of ex-officio member and its MP Manish Tewari taking the total to 20 votes.
BJP hoped that cross-voting or some defection would send votes to the tally to help in reaching the majority mark of 19 votes, said a senior Congress leader.
The voting hours were through a secret ballot. Amid reports of bickering, the AAP a day earlier released a photo of all councillors being kept in a hotel in Punjab's Ropar town to prevent "poaching".
The photo comprised three councillors who are reportedly "upset" with the party.
Harpreet Kaur Babla, councillor for the second time, is the daughter of a retired Army Colonel and married to former councillor Devinder Singh Babla who was earlier with the Congress.
AAP candidate Prem Lata is 46 years old. She is the wife of a retired Indian Air Force officer. Currently, she is teaching English to Class XI and XII students in a government school.
After the rebel councillor of the Congress Gurbax Rawat joined the BJP on January 27, the AAP and Congress shifted their councillors out of town.
This is the fourth successive year of the five-year rotational system. During this outgoing mayoral term, the BJP had retained this seat nine times consecutively.
The Supreme Court earlier this week appointed Punjab and Haryana High Court's former judge Justice Jaishree Thakur as an independent observer to oversee the mayoral election.
No mobile phones, cameras, weapons, electronic gadgets, pens and pencils were allowed during the election process.
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