Jammu: Ahead of nominations filing exercise, the Jammu and Kashmir unit of BJP on Sunday announced the names of its candidates for the posts of Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Jammu Municipal Corporation.
The Mayor Chander Mohan Gupta and his deputy Punima Sharma both resigned last month on the directions of the high command.
“The names of both the candidates were announced this evening by In-charge of Jammu and Kashmir, Tarun Chugh,” said a party leader.
He added that Corporator Rajinder Sharma and Corporator Baldev Billawaria have been named as party candidates for the posts of Mayor and Deputy Mayor respectively.
“They will file nominations on Monday,” he added.
Meanwhile the polls to elect a new Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Jammu Municipal Corporation are scheduled to be held on October 21.
“For transparent and fair polling, elections will be held through open ballot,” said an official.
Sources in the Jammu Municipal Corporation said the independent and Congress candidates is a divided house against the BJP as there was no consensus on fielding the candidates of their choice in one voice “Congress decided that Dwarka Choudhary will be the candidate for the post of Mayor, while independent corporator Yudhveer Singh would be the joint Deputy Mayor candidate on their behalf but, in a separate meeting it was decided that corporator Anu Bali on behalf of independent corporators would file nomination for the post of mayor and corporator Amit Gupta would file nomination for the post of Deputy Mayor,” sources added.
BJP is in majority in the Corporation with 44 seats while it needs 37 votes to win.
At present, there are only 73 corporators out of 75 in the Jammu Municipal Corporation as two corporators, independent Vijay Choudhary and BJP’s Raj Rani have passed away.
At present, 44 corporators are from BJP, 14 are independents and 13 are from Congress.
Notably, the BJP candidate for the post of Mayor, Rajinder Sharma from Ward Number-16 in the month of August during the General House Meeting of the JMC, brought a resolution on minimum qualification of the candidates contesting the Corporator Polls.
UNI
