Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena recently had approved a proposal to convene the first meeting of the corporation on January 6, 2023.

“The elections to the coveted posts of mayor, deputy mayor of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and six members of the standing committee from the House, will be held on Friday, January 6, 2023 at 11:00AM during the first meeting of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi,” the MCD said in a statement.

This will be the first municipal House consisting of 250 councillors who have been just elected after the high-stakes civic polls held on December 4. The House will be convened at the Civic Centre, the headquarters of the MCD on Minto Road.

According to the DMC Act 1957, “The Corporation shall at its first meeting in each year elect one of its members to be the Chairperson to be known as the Mayor and another member to be the Deputy Mayor of the Corporation.” The MCD said that the last date for filing nominations is December 27.

“The nominations can be filed in the office of Municipal Secretary on any working day between 11 AM and 5 PM. Election for the six members of standing committee will also be held in the first meeting of the House. The post of a mayor of the MCD is reserved for female member in the first year,” it said.

The post of mayor sees five single-year terms on a rotation basis, with the first year being reserved for women, the second for open category, third for reserved category, and the remaining two also being in the open category.

The election to the top post will take place nearly a month after the civic polls, results for which were announced on December 7. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the MCD polls by bagging 134 seats, ending the 15-year rule of the BJP in the MCD, and reducing the Congress to just nine seats in a House of 250 members.

The post of mayor is considered prestigious and a Delhi mayor wielded a lot of power until the erstwhile unified MCD, set up in 1958, was trifurcated into North Delhi, South Delhi and East Delhi municipal corporations in 2012 with a mayor each for three civic bodies. The civic bodies were reunified in May 2022.

Former mayor of North Delhi Jai Prakash, who served in the post from 2020-2021, earlier said, according to the old DMC Act, which governs the MCD, besides elected councillors, some nominated members also are eligible to vote in a mayoral poll.

“Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs representing constituencies which comprise wholly or partly the area of the corporation, and one-fifth of the members of the Delhi Assembly representing constituencies, to be nominated by the Speaker, and chairpersons of various municipal committees can vote in a mayoral poll,” he said.

Ten aldermen are nominated to the MCD by the Lt Governor, but they don’t vote in a mayoral election, he added.

There are no anti-defection law in the context of the civic body here, experts say.

This election was very important for AAP, given the recent reunification of MCD. The Union government's decision to reunify three MCDs – North, South, and East into one – had created two centres of power in Delhi. A power struggle would have ensued if the BJP had won the MCD. Reunification necessitated a fresh delimitation exercise, which delayed the elections and decreased the number of wards from 272 to 250.

(with PTI inputs)