NEW DELHI: Just when it seemed that the drama being played out for over two months in MCD House was finally over, a fistfight erupted between councillors, with the mayor being chased and assaulted inside the House.While the voting process for six members in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s standing committee ended smoothly on Friday, a major fight broke out after mayor Shelly Oberoi declared one vote invalid after counting was completed. BJP councillors strongly objected to the move.There was resistance, followed by a ruckus, which then snowballed into clashes in which councillors were seen thrashing each other. The newly elected mayor was shoved, attacked and had to flee.Later at night, Oberoi said re-election for the standing committee posts will held on Monday, a move strongly opposed by the BJP. In the commotion earlier in the day, Ashok Kumar Maanu, an AAP councillor from Tilak Nagar, collapsed and Meenakshi, a BJP councillor from Anarkali ward, had cuts on one hand. Maanu said, “BJP is so shameless that they even attacked women and the mayor. BJP goons did this.”On Friday, 242 out of 250 councillors voted for the six candidates on a preference basis (from 1 to 6) and those receiving the maximum preferences (number 1 and 2) were supposed to be elected as standing committee members.When the process ended around 3pm, six councillors from BJP and AAP were invited to participate in the counting, which took almost two hours. It was then that the mayor declared one vote invalid, pointing out that a councillor had given a second preference vote to two candidates.BJP said that the candidate given the first preference vote should at least be counted while Oberoi said that the vote would be declared invalid even though the municipal secretariat had declared it valid. What followed was chaos with sloganeering from both sides. AAP councillors raised the slogan “Shellyji zindabad” while BJP councillors shouted, “Mayor chor hai”.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/standing-committee-election-mayhem-chaos-disorder-in-delhi-mcd-house/articleshow/98221522.cms