Bharatiya Janata Party candidate, Corporator Rinku Vij has been elected Chairperson of the Jabalpur Municipal Corporation (JMC). He defeated his arch rival Congress party candidate, Ayodhya Tiwari by a margin of 10 votes. He got 44 votes while Tiwari secured 34 votes.

Apart from Chairperson, election for four-member Appeal Committee was also held at JMC headquarters, on Wednesday. Aruna Sahu and Gargi Yadav of Congress while Dr Sanjay Dubey and Renu Kori of BJP have been elected as member of the Appeal Committee. The Mayor chairs the Committee.

The district and JMC administration had made foolproof security arrangements for peaceful conduction of election. A large number of police personnel were deployed at the JMC headquarters to avoid any untoward incident during the election. No one, except for Mayor and Corporators was allowed to entire into Pt. Bhawani Prasad Tiwari auditorium where voting for the Chairperson and Appeal Committee members was held. Collector, Dr Illaiyaraja T conducted the election process.

As per scheduled, the election process was started at 10.30 am. At the outset the interested candidates filed nomination. Later Collector and other senior officials scrutinized the nominations and gave time for withdrawal of nomination. Afterwards voting was held for new Chairperson of the JMC from 12 noon to 1 pm.

Similarly, the process for election of the Appeal Committee of the Municipal Corporation was start from 1.30 pm. Nominations were submitted by the interested candidates from 1.30 pm to 2 pm. thereafter, scrutiny of nomination papers was done from 2 pm to 2.15 pm and time was give for withdrawal of nominations from 2.15 am to 2.30 pm. The final publication of the list of candidates was done from 2.30 to 2.45 pm. Thereafter, voting was held and after results were declared. Hoping for cross voting in the election, Congress fielded Ayodhya Tiwari as its candidate for the post of Chairperson. It may be noted that the Congress has only 26 Corporators in the 79-member House of JMC. The BJP has 44 Corporators, Independent are 7 in number while 2 AIMIM Corporators have won the election. The AIMIM Corporators doesn’t participated in the election. Amongst the senior officials present during election process were Municipal Commissioner, Ashish Vashisht, Assistant Collector, Deputy Commissioner and others.