BJP councilor from Rohini East, Pravesh Wahi, was elected Mayor of Delhi Municipal Corporation (MCD) on Wednesday.
Wahi received 156 votes, with 14 members of the Indraprastha Vikas Party supporting him. The Congress Party candidate, Hazi Zarrif, received nine votes.
BJP councilor from Anand Vihar, Monica Pant, was elected as deputy mayor with 156 votes.
Jay Bhagwan Yadav from Begumpur and Manish Chadha from Paharganj were elected to the BJP standing committee, while AAP councilor Jalaj Chaudhary from Shalimar Bagh was also elected to the MCD committee.
On being elected mayor, Wahi thanked Prime Minister Rekha Gupta and the BJP leadership, saying, “We will clean up Delhi in the coming months. We will work for the development of Delhi.”
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The electoral college for this year’s mayoral election consists of 273 votes, including 249 MLAs, 14 Delhi Assembly MLAs, seven Lok Sabha MLAs and three Rajya Sabha MLAs from Delhi. The candidate needs 137 votes to win.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) abstained from voting in the mayoral election. Earlier, the party’s Delhi unit president Saurabh Bharadwaj said in a statement that the move will allow the BJP to take charge of the civic body and help AAP “expose” the ruling party over governance.
“Despite having power at all levels, the BJP has failed to bring any change in Delhi. The BJP does not know how to perform. Only the BJP knows how to function,” Bharadwaj said.
Earlier, AAP took control of the mayor’s office, with Mahesh Kumar Khenchi winning the elections 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 reunited into a single entity on May 22, 2022, as the Delhi Municipal Corporation.
