Gurgaon: Elections to the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor will be conducted within eight weeks, starting from March 5, MCG informed Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday.The submission was made before a division bench of Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi and Justice Vikas Suri during the hearing of a petition filed by Gurgaon resident and advocate Rohit Madan, who had sought directions for filling the two posts, which have been vacant for almost a year. MCG commissioner Pradeep Dahiya confirmed the development and told TOI, “We submitted that the elections to the two posts will be held within eight weeks.” The development assumes significance as the MCG House was constituted on March 12, 2025. The petition brought the delay under judicial scrutiny.Section 36(2) of the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act, 1994 says, “The municipal corporation shall elect from among its elected members two of its elected members to be the senior deputy mayor and the deputy mayor. Their term of office is for a period of five years or for the remainder of their term as elected members of the corporation, whichever is shorter.”An attempt was previously made to hold the elections for the two posts on Aug 11, when MCG and its counterpart in Manesar (MCM) elected members to their finance and contracts committee (F&CC). However, those polls were postponed indefinitely after councillors could not reach a consensus on candidates. In the absence of the deputies, the legality of the F&CC can also be questioned since the provisions of the Act state that the panel should comprise the senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor.Section 40(3) of the Act states, “There shall also be an F&CC of the corporation comprising the mayor, the two deputy mayors, two members elected by the members from amongst themselves and the commissioner and the aforesaid committee shall exercise all the powers of the corporation in relation to contracts to be entered into for and on its behalf and the purchases to be made by it.”However, the existing F&CC of the MCG consists of the mayor Raj Rani Malhotra, two councillors, including Anup Singh (ward 25) and Sundar Singh (ward 1), and commissioner Pradeep Dahiya.BJP holds a majority in the MCG House. The BJP, in Gurgaon’s civic body polls held in March 2025, clinched 24 seats out of a total of 36, securing a majority for the first time. Ten independent candidates won in the MCG polls and Congress and JJP each obtained one seat.The elections to these two posts in MCM were also held after the intervention of the HC. It was in July last year that the HC directed Haryana govt to conduct the elections for the posts of senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor of MCM fairly and within a specified timeframe, “preferably within a three-week period”.
