With RSS hardliner Bakshi Ram Arora (70) being ‘unanimously’ elected the Amritsar Mayor, the junior partner in the ruling alliance in Punjab, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has finally managed to force the stand it had taken on the Shiromani Akali Dal.
In the 65-member Amritsar Municipal Corporation, SAD with 25 seats has a slight edge over the BJP, which has 24 members.
However, instead of the saffron party being allowed to chose on of its men to lead the house, a section of Akalis wanted a Sikh on the post. The demand gained ground as just a day after SAD-BJP combine bagged the civic body on June 10 (with 24 seats each), Damdami Taksal chief Harnam Singh Dhumma Khalsa said a SAD candidate and a Sikh should be made the mayor of Amritsar.
He reasoned that if if rebel Akalis were taken into account, SAD had more seats than the BJP . The seminary is a constituent of Sant Samaj, which entered into an alliance with SAD for the 2011 SGPC polls. This fuelled the talks that the demand was in fact made by the SAD.
The next few days witnessed more drama after the result of Ward 3 was withheld over complaints of hacking of EVMs and by the time re-poll was held on a few booths, both the Congress candidate Surinder Chaudhary and Congress rebel Dinesh Kumar had joined the Akali, paving way for SAD candidate Raj Kumar Jolly to get elected and give his party a one-man edge over the BJP.
Times of India
After asserting its supremacy in the House, SAD again tested the ground to stake a forceful claim for the mayoral position in the Holy City position, but BJP reminded its senior ally of the arrangement agreed between the two parties since 1997, as per which Amritsar and Jalandhar were to have BJP Mayors and Ludhiana and Patiala, SAD Mayors.
It was only after BJP made its stance clear that there was a pause on demand for Sikh SAD Mayor for Amritsar.
The subsequent days saw intense lobbying by Amritsar MP Navjot Singh Sidhu for Rajesh Kumar Honey and BJP cabinet minister Anil Joshi for Sukhminder Pintu for the mayoral post. The party, however, in an apparent move not to send a signal of favouritism, eventually decided on Bakshi Ram Arora.
SAD heavyweight in Majha and Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia said that though there were demands from certain sections that Amritsar Mayor should be from SAD and a Sikh, but no one from Akali Dal had put forward any such demand. “The coalition governments are bound by certain rules and whatever decision has been taken was taken under the full knowledge and directions of the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister in consultation with alliance partner,” Majithia added.
Meanwhile, Navjot Singh Sidhu said, “The party chose experience over youth. It was a collective decision of party and everyone is happy.”
