Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 28

Chandigarh BJP in-charge Dushyant Gautam will visit the city on December 30 to take views of all party councillors to decide the candidates for the mayoral elections to be held on January 8. Nominations for the post of Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor have to be filed by January 4.

After taking councillors’ viewpoint about their choice of candidates, the BJP’s National General Secretary will convey the same to the party high command. The Central leadership will finally give its stamp of approval to the names of candidates.

It is expected that the names of candidates will be announced on the final day of the nominations to avoid the chances of rebellion or discontent among councillors. The local BJP has the recent history of rebellion after the announcement of names of candidates.

BJP councillor Satish Kainth joined the Congress fold after Rajesh Kalia was named as the mayoral candidate in 2019. Similarly, 10 councillors had revolted against the party and filed nominations in favour of Asha Jaswal after it fielded Davesh Moudgil for the mayor’s post in 2018. Though, Jaswal had later withdrawn from the mayoral race.

This time, for now, the ruling party has three frontrunners for the Mayor’s post namely councillor and local party president Arun Sood and councillors Maheshinder Singh Sidhu and Shakti Prakash Devshali. Though there are other claimants as well for the post, final call lies with the high command.

At present there are two views emerging in the party. One is to give a chance to an experienced councillor, who can take on the challenges of getting funds for the MC from the Centre and to balance tuning with the bureaucrats. Another view is Sood should not be given two top responsibilities together. However, there have been BJP chiefs in the past, who also remained the Mayor at the same time.