In an embarrassment for Congress, 15 municipal councillors, supporters of Punjab Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, today boycotted the official programme of the election of the mayor of Amritsar here.
The councillors said they stayed away from the programme because Sidhu was not invited to it.
Speaking to the media, the councillors, who won the MC polls from the Amritsar (East) Assembly constituency represented by Sidhu, further said, "The cabinet minister was deliberately ignored."
District Congress president Jugal Kishore Sharma's efforts to pacify MCs were in vain.
The councillors who boycotted the mayor election included Jatinder Singh Bhatia, Ajit Singh Bhatia, Shalinder Singh, Sukhdev Singh Chahal, Rakesh Madan, Daman Uppal, Sunita Madan, Parminder Kaur, Greesh Sharma and Jatinder Sonia.
Karamjit Singh Rintu was today unanimously elected as Amritsar's mayor after a meeting of municipal councillors in the presence of Cabinet minister Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa.
Besides Rintu, Raman Bakshi was elected as the senior deputy mayor and Younis Kumar as the deputy mayor for the holy city.
Punjab Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, an MLA from Amritsar (East), had yesterday said he never went anywhere uninvited "except for the Golden Temple or Durgiana Temple", clearly expressing his displeasure at not being invited for the mayoral election.
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