BJP captures Gandhinagar civic body as Cong corporator defects

A month after the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) polls ended in a tie, BJP today captured power in the civic body as Congress corporator Pravin Patel switched sides moments before the general body meet, thus swinging the pendulum in favour of the saffron party.
The defection of the Congress corporator took place just before the general body meet held at Gandhinagar today and as a reward Patel was elected as the city Mayor.
Last month, after BJP and Congress won 16 seats each out of the total 32, both the parties were having equal chances of forming the board through draw of lots during today's meeting.

However, Patel switched sides and joined hands with BJP ahead of the meet and helped the party gain majority as its tally went up to 17 while Congress' was reduced to 15.
"I am glad to announce that Congress corporator Pravin Patel has joined BJP. With this, BJP is now in majority," said BJP general secretary and in-charge of GMC, K C Patel, ahead of the meeting.
Later in the meeting, Patel was elected as the mayor of GMC by the elected representatives of BJP. The meet saw some heated exchanges between Congress and BJP as the opposition was seemingly upset due to defection of its elected member.

After being elected as the Mayor, Pravin Patel said he hopped to BJP for the betterment of Gandhinagar and its citizens.

"Since it was a tie, I decided to switch sides to end the logjam and ensure that people of Gandhinagar are not deprived of development, as BJP is ruling at the Centre and in state. As a mayor, my priority will be to work for the betterment of people," said Patel.
Despite being made Mayor by BJP, Patel said he was not given any offer to move to the party. Patel also claimed that he always wanted to be in BJP as he originally belonged to the outfit.

This is the second occasion when Congress has lost power
in GMC due to defection.
Gandhinagar was declared as a municipal corporation in 2011. In the first election, Congress had won with 18 seats out of 33, while 15 seats went to BJP.
After the recent delimitation, number of wards have gone down from 10 to 8 while the number of seats have gone down to 32 (4 each in a ward) from previous tally of 33.
However, within just one year, BJP snatched the civic body from Congress in 2012 when three Congress councillors, including the then Mayor, switched over to the saffron party.

Since then, BJP has been ruling the GMC.