Bengaluru Gets Congress Mayor in BJP-Majority Civic Body

The headquarters of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, widely known as the BBMP.

Bengaluru:  All that Bengaluru knew this morning was that its new Mayor would be a man called Manjunath. It was that close a contest, as the new Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike or BBMP voted for its leader.

Manjunath Narayana Reddy of the Congress is Bengaluru’s new Mayor. Backed by the Janata Dal Secular, he edged out Manjunath Raju of the BJP, winning 131 votes to the latter’s 128.

Two weeks ago, the BJP had won 100 of the BBMP’s 198 wards, a victory celebrated by Prime MInister Narendra Modi as a “hat-trick.” It came soon after wins for the BJP in civic elections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

But the Congress and Janata Dal Secular joined hands today to wrest the mayor’s post from the BJP, which has dominated Bengaluru politics for some years now. They were helped by the fact that apart from corporators, 62 others, including parliamentarians and lawmakers from the state vote for the mayor.

The BJP has challenged this, calling it “undemocratic.”

New mayor Mr Reddy is a 52-year-old who lists himself as a “social activist and active Congress worker.” The man he defeated is a mechanical engineer from Benguluru’s RV College of Engineering.

Mr Reddy, a corporator for many years, has his task cut out – Bengaluru has big civic problems like nightmare traffic, bad roads, poor garbage disposal and polluted lakes.

Karnataka is ruled by the Congress, which snatched power in 2013 from a deeply fractured BJP, that was also hit hard by corruption charges against important party leaders. Months later, in the national election, the BJP won 17 of the state’s 28 seats, sweeping all three Lok Sabha seats in Bengaluru.

But its victory in the BBMP election last month was narrower than that in 2010, when it had won 111 wards.

The Congress holds 76 wards and the JD (S)’s 14.