SAD planning attack on Congress, says MLA Nagra
Tuesday, 17/03/2015
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FATEHGARH SAHIB: Even after 19 days of council elections in Punjab, the 21-member municipal council (MC) house, Sirhind– Fatehgarh Sahib, did not get its president.
The conflict between local leaders followed by excuses from all political parties — the Congress, the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) — is delaying the process every day.
With the result announced on the same day as election, on February 25, the SAD bagged nine seats, the BJP and the Congress won 4 and 5 seats respectively, and the independents managed to get three seats.
After the election, a war started between the parties to get their candidate elected as the council president. The parties started to allure independents to get their support in order to gain a majority. The SAD managed to get the support of two independents, taking its number to 11, and claimed majority to get their candidate elected as the president.
In the mean time, the situation turned with the BJP and the Congress joining hands with the one remaining independent member and securing their side with 11 votes combined.
All the other three MCs of the district other than Sirhind, have got their respective presidents, with the SAD claiming the seat in Mandi Gobindgarh and Bassi Pathana constituency.
To elect the president, one meeting has already been postponed in the last few days and has been rescheduled for Tuesday.
The local congress MLA has alleged that the Akali group is threatening him. MLA Kuljit Singh Nagra said, “Our sources have informed that the SAD would attack us while on the way to meeting and would probably not let us reach the MC office for meeting.”
“I have already talked to the administration and have demanded police protection. The administration would be responsible if anything happens to us,” Nagra said. He added, “Being the ruling party in the state, the SAD is pressurising us to elect their man as the president.”
DC Kamaldeep Sangha said, “We would do our best to maintain peace. We have asked the senior superintendent of police to deploy police personnel for MLA’s security during the election.
