Jaipur mayor, 3 councillors suspended for manhandling commissioner

Jaipur Greater Municipal Corporation mayor and three councillors were suspended by the Rajasthan government on Sunday for allegedly misbehaving with the commissioner of the municipal corporation on Friday.

Suspended mayor Somya Gurjar and two councillors, Ajay Singh Chauhan and Paras Jain, are members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while the third councillor, Shankar Sharma, is an independent. They are accused of manhandling, pushing and abusing commissioner Yagya Mitra Singh Deo in the mayor’s chamber, where he was attending a meeting related to a company engaged in door-to-door garbage collection on Friday, said people aware of the development.

They said, a heated argument broke out between the two and the commissioner threatened to leave. In the middle of all this, the councillors allegedly manhandled and abused him.

The suspended mayor says the action was politically motivated. “The allegations are baseless. I never thought that this would be the result of working honestly. The government’s act is due to political animosity. It is supporting those who are doing wrong things. I have full faith in the judiciary,” Gurjar said.

BJP state president Satish Poonia said the party will fight for the three members. “The suspension of the mayor and the councillors is unfortunate. This will lead to the fall of the Congress,” he said.