New Delhi
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will hold elections for the posts of mayor and deputy mayor on April 25, the municipal secretariat said in an order on Friday.
To be sure, elections to the mayoral posts are held in the first meeting of every financial year, usually in April. Until the election is held, the incumbent—in this case, Mahesh Khichi of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)—holds the post till a successor is elected.
The order issued by municipal secretary Siva Prasad on April 11 said: “The ordinary April meeting of MCD will be held on April 25, 2025 at 2pm at Aruna Asaf Ali Sabhagar at Civic Centre in which election of mayor and deputy mayor will also be held.”
Civic polls in Delhi are held every five years and the elections for the mayoral posts are held every year. The last civic polls were held in 2022 and the last mayoral election in November 2024, as then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was incarcerated and could not give his approval to the exercise in April 2024.
This year, the positions are open to all councillors, as reservations for women in the first term and SC in the third term, do not apply.
A senior MCD official said that with the formal notification, the election process has started and the nominations can be filed till April 21. “Once the nominations are finalised, the municipal secretariat will start the process of appointing a presiding officer. Under the process for appointment of the presiding officer, a file with probable names are sent to the lieutenant governor via the urban development ministry ,” the official, requesting anonymity, said.
Following the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win in the Delhi State Assembly elections in February, many councillors from the AAP, which held the majority in the house until then, defected to the BJP, giving it an upper hand in the upcoming elections.
Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the MCD, Raja Iqbal Singh, accused the AAP of slowing development in the city. “AAP, due to its petty political tactics, obstructed the formation of the standing committee in the corporation. AAP was aware that it might not win the Standing Committee chairmanship election and therefore, created hurdles at every step of the formation process.”
“Now that the AAP has lost its majority in the house, its exit from the MCD seems imminent,” he said.
Mayor Mahesh Khichi did not respond to requests for comment.
Electoral college and numbers
The electoral college for mayoral elections comprises 250 councillors, seven Lok Sabha members, three Rajya Sabha MPs, and 14 MLAs nominated by the speaker of the Delhi legislative assembly. Ten aldermen form part of the proceedings, but they do not have voting rights.
On March 22, Delhi speaker Vijender Gupta nominated 14 MLAs to the MCD, including 11 from the BJP and three from the AAP.
In 2022, the AAP won the civic body polls with a seat count of 134 to the BJP’s 104. The mayoral election on November 14, 2024, saw the AAP candidate win by just three votes due to cross-voting.
Of the electoral college of 274 members, the BJP has the support of 135 members and AAP, the support of 119 members. Twelve seats are vacant on account of 11 councillors being elected MLAs and one as MP.
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