Solan: Congress seeks disqualification of four councillors for not toeing party line
Ambika Sharma
Solan, December 22
Peeved at the embarrassing drubbing of its official candidates in the recently held Solan mayoral poll, the Congress has sought disqualification of its four councillors who voted against them.
Number game
- The Mayor’s post was won by rebel Congress candidate Usha Sharma, who polled 11 votes while the Deputy Mayor’s post was bagged by BJP’s Mira Anand, who polled 12 votes
- This happened despite the fact the Congress has nine councillors while the BJP has seven in the House
- The nine Congress candidates were split into two groups, comprising five led by the cabinet minister DR Shandil and four led by former Mayor Punam Grover
In a representation to the Solan MC Commissioner, District Congress Committee president Shiv Kumar has cited rule 8A of the HP Municipal Corporation Act for seeking disqualification of the four councillors for voting contrary to the direction of the party.
These four councillors are Mayor Usha Sharma, outgoing Mayor Punam Grover, outgoing Deputy Mayor Rajeev Kaura and councillor Abhay Sharma.
The Mayor’s post was won by rebel Congress candidate Usha Sharma who polled 11 votes while the Deputy Mayor’s post was bagged by BJP’s Mira Anand who polled 12 votes. This happened despite the fact the Congress has nine councillors while the BJP has seven in the House.
Only six BJP councillors were present for the election besides an Independent. The nine Congress candidates were divided into two groups comprising five led by the cabinet minister DR Shandil and four led by former Mayor Punam Grover. Shandil also participated in the voting. The official mayoral candidate Sardar Singh polled barely six votes while the official deputy mayoral candidate Sangeeta Thakur polled five votes.
The DCC has, however, not sought any action against the fifth councillor of the party who had also voted against the official deputy mayoral candidate. The party had adopted two yardsticks to seek disqualification of four councillors while conveniently remaining silent on the fifth one. This pick and choose policy has further exposed the fissures within the party.
A letter from the Congress authorising the DCC president regarding the official candidates was affixed with the representation given to the Commissioner last evening but no such letter was produced at the time of the election on December 7 before the officials, allege the councillors . The DCC had given its letter to the Additional Deputy Commissioner, who was conducting the elections, after the nomination of the Mayor had been completed. The DCC had not produced any authorisation letter from the party during the election, alleged Punam Grover. This had put a question mark over the candidature of the official Congress candidates.
Despite holding several meetings, including the last one till 10:30 pm on December 6, hours before the election, the Congress observers comprising three cabinet ministers could not arrive upon any consensus for the two posts. Grover said no one informed them about the official Congress candidates and it was only while filing nominations did they learn about their names.
She added that the Congress councillors led by Shandil have spared no effort to destabilise their two and a half year tenure. A no-confidence motion was brought by four Congress councillors along with seven BJP councillors a day before Priyanka Gandhi’s rally at Solan in October 2022. The motion, however, failed to be moved due to technical grounds.
The party failed to take any action against the four erring councillors though they tried to harm the party’s prospects in the Vidhan Sabha poll last year. Grover added that despite complaints before state and central leaders, no action was taken for this anti-party move.
A fresh complaint has been made by Grover and her group to the All-India Congress Committee’s state in-charge Rajeev Shukla in Delhi and action has been sought against the erring councillors and those who failed to act against their genuine complaints.
