GHMC Mayoral polls: Voting for Greater Hyderabad mayor, dy mayor posts to be held shortly; TRS likely to win

Election for the posts of Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, which witnessed pitched battle between ruling TRS and BJP in December last, will be held on Thursday and K Chandrashekhar Rao-led outfit has fair chances to bag both the positions as a single largest party. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) party bagged 56 divisions, while BJP secured 48 divisions and MIM won in 44 divisions and Congress won in two divisions, in the 150-seat civic body. The BJP’s strength has come down to 47 following the death of one of its members. The saffron party, which gave run for TRSs money has also decided to put up its candidates for both Mayor and Deputy Mayor, its chief spokesperson K Krishna Saagar Rao said. “BJP is contesting for both Mayor and Deputy Mayoral positions in the spirit of democracy and to oppose the opportunist, dubious election of TRS party’s design to attain Mayor position through backhand deal with AIMIM. TRS did not get people’s mandate to run GHMC, the mandate was fractured and leaned massively towards BJP,” he told PTI.  TRS sources said their Mayoral and Deputy Mayoral  candidates names will be given to its members in sealed covers. The Lok Sabha MPs and MLAs, who have their vote in the city are ex-officio members of the corporation. Besides, MLCs and Rajya Sabha members, who have their vote in the city, have to give an option, choosing the GHMC, to be able to vote, official sources said. According to GHMC sources, there are 44 ex-officio member votes in the GHMC and TRS has 32 followed by MIM 10, BJP 2 who are eligible to vote taking the total number of votes to 194. With ex-officio member votes, the TRS strength goes up to 88, MIM 54 and BJP 49 leading to total 193. There has to be a quorum of 50 percent (97) of the members to conduct Mayor Elections and whichever candidate secures more number of votes will be elected as the Mayor. The election will be held at 12.30 PM on 11 February and an hour earlier all the 150 corporators would be administered the oath, the Telangana State Election Commission (SEC) said on Wednesday. Further, if for any reason the elections are not held on 11 February, it will be held the next day, the SEC had said.