CONGRESS STAMP ON SHIMLA MUNICIPAL BODY ELECTIONS

In a sweeping victory, the Congress party won 24 out of 34 wards in the Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC) elections held on Tuesday, reclaiming the prestigious civic body from the BJP. Shimla Deputy Commissioner Aditya Negi confirmed that the BJP captured nine wards, while the CPI-M secured just one.

With 34 candidates each, both the BJP and the Congress contested all available seats, while the CPI-M fielded four. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which put forward 21 candidates, failed to secure any wards, and all nine independent candidates were defeated.

This triumph follows the Congress party’s success in the December 2022 assembly polls, where they won 40 out of 68 seats. In the previous SMC elections held in 2017, the BJP had seized the civic body from Congress for the first time in 32 years, winning 17 wards. At that time, the Congress secured 12 wards, the CPI-M one, and independent candidates captured the remaining four.

The Congress party’s success in the recent election can be attributed to several factors, including the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) implementation, which appealed to the SMC’s high number of government employees. Additionally, the SMC area comprises assembly constituencies of two cabinet ministers, Aniruddh Singh and Vikramaditya Singh, as well as Congress MLA Harish Janartha.