MCD House proceedings were marred by frequent disruptions in 2024.
| Photo Credit: file photo

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won 48 out of 70 seats in the Assembly poll and all Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in 2024, is now looking to secure a victory in the mayoral elections scheduled for April.

The party, which lost the 2022 civic polls and won 104 out of 250 wards in the city, is upbeat about winning the posts of Delhi’s Mayor and Deputy Mayor, given its current strength in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) House. Accounting for the eight councillors who won the Assembly election, one (Kamaljeet Sehrawat) who was elected the West Delhi MP, and several others who joined last year, the party currently has a total of 112 councillors.

The anti-defection law, which punishes individual MPs and MLAs for leaving one party for another, is not in force in the civic body.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which came to power in the MCD with 134 councillors, now has 118, taking into account the councillors who switched parties and the three who won the Assembly election. The current Mayor, Mahesh Khichi, is from AAP.

Numbers game

The BJP fancies its chances in the mayoral polls as the Capital’s seven Lok Sabha members, three Rajya Sabha members and 14 MLAs nominated by the Delhi Assembly Speaker also have voting rights in the elections, apart from the elected councillors.

While the Congress, with its eight councillors, could prove to be a roadblock in the BJP’s plans, the grand old party has, in the last three mayoral polls, abstained from voting.

The BJP will also look to formally take control of the MCD’s Standing Committee, the civic body’s primary financial and policy panel, where it managed to get a majority in the polls held last year but whose functioning has been affected due to frequent disruptions in the House.