Delhi finally gets new mayor as Aam Aadmi Party's Shelly Oberoi wins elections

After three Delhi civic House meetings and AAP-BJP tussle, the national capital finally has a new mayor. Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Shelly Oberoi was elected as the new Delhi mayor on Wednesday after  over two hours of voting for Delhi's mayoral election. A total of 10 nominated MPs, 14 nominated MLAs and 241 elected Councilors out of 250 voted.

Oberoi bagged 150 votes, winning the mayoral polls. defeated BJP's Rekha Gupta by a margin of 34 votes and became the first single mayor in 10 years after the delimitation of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

Shelly Oberoi, 39, is a former Delhi University professor. She won the MCD seat from former Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta’s home turf. Oberoi is a lifetime member of the Indian Commerce Association (ICA) and also the member of Institutional Innovative Council (IIC), IGNOU. Read more about her here

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia took to Twitter to congratulate her while taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). "The goons lost, the public won," he said in a tweet.

Delhi got the mayor in the fourth attempt since the earlier elections were stalled amid the tussle between the BJP and the AAP councilors over voting rights being given to nominated members.

Last week, Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena gave his nod to convene the municipal House for holding the mayoral election following the Supreme Court order that said nominated members cannot vote in the mayoral elections.

BJP MPs Meenakashi Lekhi and Hans Raj Hans were among the firsts to cast their votes. Other BJP MPs -- Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, Harsh Vardhan, Gautam Gambhir, Ramesh Bidhuri and Manoj Tiwari -- and AAP MPs Sanjay Singh, N D Gupta and Sushil Kumar Gupta have also exercised their franchise. AAP MLAs Durgesh Pathak and Atishi also caste their votes.

The AAP had scored landslide victory in the December 4 MCD polls, bagging 134 wards and ending the BJP's 15-year rule in the civic body. The BJP won 104 wards to finish second, while the Congress won nine seats in the 250-member municipal House.

According to the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) Act, 1957, the mayor and the deputy mayor are to be elected in the very first session of the House after the civic polls. However, on January 6, when the House had convened for the first time, a ruckus between AAP and BJP led to the adjournment of the House.

The second and third meetings on January 24 and February 6 also failed to carry out the exercise, and were both adjourned without electing a mayor, triggering much political bickering among parties in the two months since the civic polls.

The crisis also impacted the annual budget proceedings and the schedule of taxes for 2023-24 was passed by the Special Officer of the MCD on February 15, since the deliberative wing has not come into place.

Both the BJP and AAP members held each other responsible for the derailment of the proceedings.