After a hiatus of ten months, UT Administrator Banwari Lal Purohit Tuesday nominated as many as nine councillors of UT Municipal Corporation. Incidentally, all the nominated councillors owe strong allegiance to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with five of them presently the office bearers of the party. The others are from BJP leaders Sanjay Tandon and Arun Sood’s camps.
While two are BJP district presidents Satinder Singh Sidhu and Dr Naresh Panchal, another Anil Masih is the BJP Minority Morcha general secretary, Dharminder Saini is president of BJP Kisan Morcha, Chandigarh, and Amit Jindal is member of the BJP finance committee.
Sidhu is the party’s district president from village Sarangpur, Dr Panchal is the district president from village Behlana. Masih is said to be representing the Christian community and Jindal the traders’ body. Jindal has industries in UT and Himachal and also co-owns the Swami Devi Dyal Group of Colleges in Barwala with his brother. He is close to Sood and is a member of the party’s finance committee.
Another representative from Daria is Dharminder Saini, president of UT BJP Kisan Morcha. He owns a hotel in Daria, while his mother Mohinder Kaur is a retired teacher. They both owe allegiance to the BJP.
The nominated councillors also include Geeta Chauhan, a social worker and a close aide of former BJP councillor Vinod Aggarwal. Another nominated councillor, Dr Ramneek Singh Bedi, is the vice president of the Indian Medical Association.
Umesh Ghai, a resident of Sector 37, UT, is from the Tandon-Sood camp, and is said to represent the residents welfare associations in the city and is the vice chairman of the Chandigarh Residents’ Association Welfare Federation (CRAWFED).
Many including former Congress president Subhash Chawla, AAP president Prem Garg were in the fray for nominated councillors. There are nine nominated councillors in the General House of the UT civic body, who do not have voting rights.
