Bengaluru: The newly elected Mayor R Sampath Raj said he would give priority to cleaning drains, clearing garbage and filling up potholes to make Bengaluru more livable for the citizens. The election to the post of the 51st mayor of the city was boycotted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which said the list of eligible voters was faulty.
Corporators are allowed to vote, along with legislators and lawmakers from the area covered by civic agency BBMP limits. The term of the mayor is one year and the outgoing mayor is the Congress’s G Padmavathi.
The Congress activists celebrated the victory of R Sampath Raj by bursting crackers. While the BJP corporators swept up the cracker mess citing Swachh Bharat,
The BJP has boycotted today’s crucial elections to pick a Mayor for Bengaluru, a city which is facing multiple environmental and infrastructural problems. The party has filed a complaint before the Election Commission, alleging that there were voters on the list who were not eligible to vote as they live outside the city’s municipal limits. The Congress-JD(S) combine, which commanded more votes than the BJP, the single largest party, swept the polls.
The Congress, which is celebrating their new mayor, Sampath Raj, has denied any irregularity. “The BJP knew they would lose so they did this,” said the Congress’s IT cell general secretary, Niranjan Kumar.
Sampath Raj is the corporator from DG Halli. His deputy mayor will be Padmavathi from the JD(S).
Challenges galore
The new mayor will inherit a number of challenges. The civic woes of the IT city have made international headlines for the last couple of years, with three of the city’s largest lakes breaking out in foam and fire after every bout of rain and spraying passing pedestrians with smelly foam and sewage.
For the last two years, the city has been flooded during the monsoon. The civic bodies had cited illegal construction over drains as a reason, but the matter was not addressed.
Solid waste management also remains a big issue, with methods to deal with the waste still a work in progress.
