The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Gautam Kumar Jain was elected as the 54th Mayor of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) on Tuesday, October 1.
The 43-year-old Gautam Kumar Jain is a second-time BJP corporator from Jogupalya ward in Shantinagar constituency. He has been appointed as the new Mayor after defeating Congress candidate RS Sathyanarayana. Jain won the election by securing 129 votes while Sathyanarayana got 110 votes.
The civic administration was scheduled to organise four standing committee polls as well. The polls were postponed as no nominations were filed.
After a series of overnight meetings, BJP had finalised their candidate for the BBMP Mayoral election. The saffron party was facing a crisis as several corporators had their eyes on the post and aspired to become the Mayor. Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa held a breakfast meeting at 8 am on Tuesday to finalise the candidates for Mayor and Deputy Mayor posts.
The BJP had selected Corporators Padmanabha Reddy and Gautam Kumar as the candidates for Mayor post and had reportedly suggested Corporators Guru Murthy and Mahalakshmi for Dy Mayor post.
However, Padmanabha Reddy, the former opposition leader of BBMP, withdrew his nomination after meeting the senior leaders of the party. Two of the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) corporators had walked away from the BBMP council hall alleging match-fixing in the mayoral elections.
Kannada activist and president of the Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha, Vatal Nagaraj also protested inside the BBMP against the election of Mayor Gautam Kumar Jain, as he is not a Kannadiga. He was later taken away by the police.
