The newly elected BJP mayors of five cities of Haryana Thursday talked about their priorities, with the youngest mayor calling for decongestion of the voluminous traffic passing through Panipat.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had on Wednesday swept the mayoral elections in Panipat, Hisar, Karnal, Yamunanagar and Rohtak.
Among the winning candidates are two women-- 25-year-old Avneet Kaur from Panipat, the youngest mayor, and 48-year-old Renu Bala Gupta from Karnal.
Avneet had registered a massive victory over her nearest rival Anshu Kaur, who was backed by a local Congress leader. The BJP candidate won by a huge margin of 74,940 votes.
Spelling out her priorities after the win, Avneet said Thursday, "My priorities will be to work towards decongesting the voluminous traffic of Panipat. Among other tasks are covering Panipat's drain number 1".
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"We will also hold municipal corporation meetings after every 15 days wherein problems relating to the wards will be discussed," she said.
About holding the first direct elections for mayor's post, Avneet said, "It will help mayors focus more on the tasks at hand. The focus will also be towards development as against in the past when some councilors used to indulge in
leg-pulling".
For Renu Bala Gupta, who won from Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar's home constituency of Karnal, the focus will be on continuing the ongoing development works.
Gautam Sardana (43), who won from Hisar, said among his priorities will be to provide better health facilities and installing CCTV cameras to curb crime.
While 68-year-old Manmohan Goyal will focus on cleanliness and hygiene issues in Rohtak city, his counterpart from YamunanagarMadan Chauhan (52) will work towards solving sewerage and traffic issues in his area.
On BJP winning the mayoral polls, the chief minister had termed it as an "endorsement of the policies and development agenda of the government".
It was the first time the mayors of the five municipal corporations were elected directly. Earlier, councillors used to elect the mayors.
The saffron party had also put up an impressive performance as many councilors who fought on the party symbol won the seats.
From Yamunanagar, 13 of its nominees were elected as councilors in the 22-member Municipal Corporation (MC) House, while in Karnal the party won 12 of 20 corporation wards. In Panipat, the BJP made a clean sweep winning 22 of the total 26 wards.
However, in Hisar, the ruling outfit managed to win just seven of the 20 wards and also fell short of majority in the 22-member Rohtak MC House.
Polls were also held to two municipal committees.
Women candidates outshone their male counterparts in Jakhal and Pundri municipal committees.
Out of 26 councillor seats, with 13 each in both the committees, 16 were bagged by women, all Independents. No party had fought these polls on party symbol.
The election was seen as a "battle of prestige" for the chief minister who had campaigned extensively for the same.
There are 10 municipal corporations in the state and the polls were earlier held in Gurugram and Faridabad.
The municipal polls are yet to be held in Sonipat, Panchkula and Ambala due to delimitation exercise and related litigation.
Though opposition Congress did not contest the polls, some of its leaders extended support to Independents for the mayoral polls. The INLD-BSP combine, which was contesting some of the mayoral seats on their party symbols, faced a severe beating and was even behind the Independents.
Opposition parties had also targeted the chief minister for allegedly playing the "Punjabi" card to woo the urban voters in these polls.
However, Khattar has maintained, "We are committed to development of the entire state, from day one we have said 'Haryana Ek, Haryanvi Ek', this is the mantra we believe in. People belong to different castes, but we do not discriminate on the basis of caste, we treat all as one".
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
