Elections to five of the standing committees in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation have been postponed to Friday as the tactical deployment of councillors by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to capture control of certain standing committees led to a lack of quorum in others.
Only the welfare, town planning and tax appeal standing committees were formed in the elections held on Wednesday.
The welfare standing committee formation was completed without an election as only the required number of 13 councillors put in their names to be included in it. The elections, in cases where more than the required number of councillors nominate their names for a particular committee, are held through a preferential voting system.
The BJP managed a majority in the town planning standing committee, despite councillor and former DGP R.Sreelekha’s vote becoming invalid due to her failure in noting her name and signature on the ballot paper.
The LDF’s strategy was to capture control of at least the tax appeal standing committee, as part of which more number of LDF councillors had nominated their names to the committee. To prevent this, the BJP also nominated more councillors to this committee, thus reducing the required quorum in a few other committees.
