Kejriwal advises L-G to hold Delhi mayoral elections on February 22

Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, sent a proposal to Delhi’s L-G VK Saxena on Saturday regarding the elections, a day after the Supreme Court declared that nominated members cannot cast ballots in the elections for mayor of Delhi. The AAP leader has advised L-G to hold the mayor elections on February 22.

‘Recommended MCD Mayor elections to be held on 22 Feb,’ Kejriwal said in a tweet.

The AAP-BJP conflict has caused the elections for mayor of the national capital to be postponed three times. Since the election to choose a mayor for the nation’s capital got under way, the Municipal House has seen unprecedented changes.

The MCD house had to be adjourned on January 6 after heated exchanges between BJP and AAP members during their first meeting after the civic elections.

Following the oath-taking ceremony, the second municipal House was briefly suspended on January 24. The presiding officer then decided to postpone the meeting until the following date. Satya Sharma, a BJP council member and the pro-tem presiding officer, called an end to the third session as well.

Nominated members, or aldermen, are not permitted to vote in house meetings, according to the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act.

The apex court also mandated that a notice convening the municipal corporation’s first meeting within 24 hours be issued in order to set the date of the mayor election. Shelly Oberoi, an AAP candidate for mayor, filed a petition asking for an early election.

The BJP’s 15-year rule in the civic body had come to an end after the AAP won 134 wards and was declared the clear winner of the elections on December 4.

The Congress won nine seats in the 250-member municipal House, while the BJP won 104 wards to finish in second place.

After being divided into three in 2012, Delhi’s three civic bodies were unified in May of last year, ten years later.

The BJP had been accused by the AAP of ‘strangulating democracy and the Constitution of India,’ which the saffron party claimed was the reason the mayoral election could not go forward.