BJP opposed to mayoral rights reduction in Uttar Pradesh
BJP Braj Pradesh president Purushottam Khandelwal said this was a deliberate ploy to weaken the BJP's initiative to bring development to all major cities of the state through the mayors.
Alleging that the Akhilesh Yadav government has reduced the rights of municipal mayors by 90 per cent, the BJP, which has the largest number of elected mayors in the state, is up in arms claiming that this is a ploy by the Samajwadi Party to affect the 2017 Assembly elections.
Talking to India Today after giving a memorandum to the Agra district magistrate, addressed to the UP Governor in protest of this step taken by the state government, BJP Braj Pradesh president Purushottam Khandelwal said this was a deliberate ploy to weaken the BJP's initiative to bring development to all major cities of the state through the mayors.
"The Uttar Pradesh government has 'decided' in its latest order that a mayor can be impeached by the corporators through a no-confidence motion, which is completely unconstitutional. The mayor is a directly elected representative of the people of the city and cannot be removed," he said.
Khandelwal said the current Agra mayor Indrajeet Arya was one of the several mayors who had been elected on a BJP ticket, but he chose to take up membership of the Samajwadi Party and currently, owing to his party obligations, he is the only mayor in the state who is not opposed to the state government's bid to reduce the already minimal mayoral powers. "In these conditions, it will be better if Arya resigned from the post of Agra mayor," the BJP leader said.
Answering these allegations, Agra mayor Indrajeet Arya said the mayoral rights had been first reduced by the BJP under the then urban development minister Lalji Tandon. "Now the BJP is resorting to aggressive posturing in order to make the Samajwadi Party look undemocratic. This will not affect the outcome of the 2017 elections in which the BJP will suffer a massive defeat at the hands of the Samajwadi Party," Arya said, adding that the Akhilesh Yadav government was doing a great job in the state at present and there is an atmosphere of hope and development in the state.
"The BJP, however, has lost in Delhi miserably and the people are now starting to realise how they were fooled by the party in the 2014 Parliament elections," he said.