Belagavi: The Belagavi City Corporation got its first Kannada-speaking mayor in five years after Basappa Chikkaldinni was declared elected unopposed on Thursday. His deputy is Madhushri Pujari, from the Marathi group.
The 58-member corporation is broadly divided into two linguistic groups without any political affiliations. The Kannada group’s candidate won the elections because the mayor’s post had been reserved for an ST candidate, and the Marathi group didn’t have one on its side. Hence, the election was without a contest.
As soon as the mayoral election process began around 10am Thursday, Basappa Chikkaldinni (form ward 55) was the only one to file the nomination papers for the post of mayor. For the deputy’s post, three candidates from the Marathi group — Madhushri Appasaheb Pujari (ward 13), Minaxi Chigare (ward 48) and Megha Dilip Haladankar (ward 26) — and Shanta Uppar (ward 54) from the Kannada entity filed the papers.
Megha and Minaxi withdrew their nominations and extended their support to Madhushri Pujari, who defeated Shanta 31-23.
Besides council members, four MLAs and two MPs were eligible to vote in the mayoral polls. Since councillor Bhairgouda Balagouda Patil (ward 57) was facing a court case for allegedly producing fake documents during his election as a council member, his voting right had been withdrawn. One councillor, three MLAs and two MPS didn’t turn up to vote in the polls.
Regional commissioner PA Haladankar conducted the elections. Belagavi commissioner Shashidhar Kurer accompanied him.
After his election, Basappa Chikkaldinni expressed happiness and thanked the Jarkiholi brothers, especially Sathish, for their support, and vowed to make the city “more beautiful and clean”.
Before the poll process began, councillor Pandhari Parab and MLA Sambhaji Patil had urged the authorities to conduct the proceedings in Hindi as many didn’t understand Kannada. But Kannada members Ramesh Sontakki and Sarala Herekar objected to this request. The election officer said elections will be held in Kannada as that’s the administrative language of Karnataka.
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