Jammu, Oct 16: The much awaited polls to elect new Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Jammu Municipal Corporation are scheduled to be held on October 21.
The process of filing nominations will begin on October 17.
“For transparent and fair polling, elections for new Mayor and Deputy Mayor will be held through open ballot on October 21 and the nominations will be filed on Monday,” said an official.
The BJP is expected to announce its names for the posts by this evening while the Congress and Independent councillors are also in the race.
Sources in the Jammu Municipal Corporation said the independent and Congress candidates is a divided house against the BJP as there was no-consensus on fielding the candidates of their choice in one voice.
“Congress decided that Dwarka Choudhary will be the candidate for the post of Mayor, while independent corporator Yudhveer Singh would be the joint Deputy Mayor candidate on their behalf but, in a separate meeting it was decided that corporator Anu Bali on behalf of independent corporators would file nomination for the post of mayor and corporator Amit Gupta would file nomination for the post of Deputy Mayor,” sources added.
Sources revealed that for BJP, the names will be finalised by this evening in a meeting to be chaired by In-charge Jammu and Kashmir, Tarun Chugh.
BJP is in majority in the Corporation with 44 seats while it needs 37 votes to win. At present, there are only 73 corporators out of 75 in the Jammu Municipal Corporation as two corporators, independent Vijay Choudhary and BJP’s Raj Rani have passed away.
At present, 44 corporators are from BJP, 14 are independents and 13 are from Congress. (Agencies)