Elections to five standing committees in Thiruvananthapuram Corporation postponed

Elections to five of the standing committees in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation have been postponed to Friday as the tactical deployment of councillors by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to capture control of certain standing committees led to a lack of quorum in others.

Only the welfare, town planning and tax appeal standing committees were formed in the elections held on Wednesday.

The welfare standing committee formation was completed without an election as only the required number of 13 councillors put in their names to be included in it. The elections, in cases where more than the required number of councillors nominate their names for a particular committee, are held through a preferential voting system.

The BJP managed a majority in the town planning standing committee, despite councillor and former DGP R.Sreelekha’s vote becoming invalid due to her failure in noting her name and signature on the ballot paper.

The LDF’s strategy was to capture control of at least the tax appeal standing committee, as part of which more number of LDF councillors had nominated their names to the committee. To prevent this, the BJP also nominated more councillors to this committee, thus reducing the required quorum in a few other committees.

Both the LDF and the BJP now have an equal number of members in the committee, with CPI(M) councillor R.P. Sivaji’s vote becoming invalid as he had failed to mark his name and signature properly on the ballot paper. Considering the equal numbers, the chairperson of the committee will be selected by drawing lots.

The rest of the committees, including finance, public works, education and sports as well as development, were not filled due to the lack of the stipulated number of councillors.

The BJP is considering V.Sathyavathi to head the welfare committee, G.S. Manju to head the public works committee, R.C. Beena to head the tax appeal committee, Karamana Ajith to the health committee, and Chempazhanthy Udayan to head the education and sports committee.

Independent councillor M. Radhakrishnan, whose support is crucial for the BJP to attain simple majority, is likely to head the town planning committee.