Banda Kartika Reddy of the Congress party was Friday elected unopposed as Hyderabad’s first woman mayor after the ruling party agreed to sharing of power with the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) in the civic body.
Kartika Reddy, who was elected as corporator from Tarnaka division in last month’s elections, is also the first mayor of Greater Hyderabad.
Jaffer Hussain Meraj of MIM was elected as the deputy mayor without a contest. The election of mayor and deputy mayor took place at the first meeting of newly-elected corporators and ex-officio members (MPs and legislators) of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).
About 60 members of the state assembly, council, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha also had voting rights along with the corporators.
Since the main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and other parties did not field a candidate, presiding officer and Hyderabad District Collector Naveen Mittal declared Kartika Reddy and Jaffer elected unopposed for the posts of mayor and deputy mayor respectively.
Kartika Reddy, belonging to a backward class, was earlier selected as Congress nominee at a meeting of the party corporators, legislators and MPs Friday morning.
The election of mayor and deputy mayor proved a mere formality after Congress and MIM entered into a power-sharing agreement. Under the agreement, Congress will hold the post of mayor for three years and MIM for two years. The Congress will hold the post for the first two years, while MIM will have its corporator as mayor for the next two. The ruling party will again get the post for the last year.
Congress had emerged as the single largest party in the 150-member GHMC by bagging 52 seats in the Nov 23 elections. TDP bagged 45 seats while MIM emerged kingmaker with 43 seats.
About 43 percent of 5.7 million voters had cast their votes in the elections for GHMC. This was the first municipal election after Greater Hyderabad was created in 2007 after merging eight municipalities and 12 villages of neighbouring districts with Hyderabad.
This has made Greater Hyderabad the second biggest urban agglomerate in the country after New Delhi in terms of area (621.48 sq km).
In the last election to the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) held in 2002, TDP, which was in power in the state, had won majority of the seats in the then 100-member body in alliance with BJP. The TDP candidate was elected mayor in the direct elections held to the post.
