CONGRESS Party candidate Rajkishore Prasad was elected as new Mayor of Korba Municipal Corporation. He defeated Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Ritu Chourasiya by one vote. Korba Municipal Corporation is the 10th in State to have Congress Party Mayor.

After much speculations and mutual-allegations by both the major parties, Congress Party candidate Rajkishore Prasad became the fifth Mayor of Korba Municipal Corporation.

It is speculated that this result has again established the supremacy of Revenue Minister Jaisingh Agrawal in district politics. In its journey from 26 seats to 34 votes, Congress received support from independent candidates and other political parties. The final counting of votes for Mayor showed 34 votes for Congress and 33 for BJP.

It needs to be mentioned that the results of civic body elections were declared on December 24, when the BJP stood at first position with 31 seats, followed

by Congress with 26, JCC(J) with two, CPI (Marxist) with two and BSP with one seat.

The remaining five seats went to independent candidates. Since the declaration of results, both major parties had started efforts to secure sufficient number of votes for Mayor.

In the journey from 26 seats to 34 votes, Congress received support from three independent candidates, along with two corporators from CPI (Marxist) and one corporator from BSP.

This brought Congress at an equal footing with BJP, with both parties having 31 votes each.

The last declaration of support came from JCC (J), which issued a letter on Friday, stating that their corporators will support Congress in Mayor Election.

The oath- taking ceremony for corporators began at 11 am in Zila Panchayat Bhawan. It was followed by nomination process for Mayor. Voting began at 12.45pm and continued till 1.30pm. The final result came out at 1.50pm and it sent wave of celebration among Congress workers.