After a long wait, the elections for the post of Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) took place on Thursday. Gadwal Vijayalakshmi of the TRS was elected as the first citizen of Hyderabad and Mote Sri Latha Sobhan Reddy was elected as the Deputy Mayor.
Gadwal Vijayalakshmi is a two-time Corporator from the Banjara Hills division and is also the daughter of Rajya Sabha MP and senior party leader K Keshavarao. She is from the BC (Munurukapu) caste and according to political observers, this was one of the key factors why TRS choose her as their candidate for the Mayor’s post. Sri Latha Sobhan Reddy, who is the Tarnaka corporator, was elected as the Deputy Mayor.
While the TRS nominated G Vijayalakshmi as their Mayoral candidate, BJP nominated RK Puram corporator Veeranagari Radha as the BJP’s candidate. TRS’s G Vijayalakshmi was voted as the Mayor by a show of hands. AIMIM also extended support to the TRS candidate by voting in their favour.
After the voting, when the TRS candidate was announced as the Mayor of Hyderabad, BJP corporators raised ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ slogans. The presiding officer had to request them to maintain decorum in the house.
Exuding confidence just after being elected, while speaking to the media, newly elected Hyderabad Mayor G Vijayalakshmi said, "I feel very proud, I thank both CM KCR and KTR for choosing two women. There are many things I want to concentrate on. As a woman, I promise complete safety for women in Hyderabad. Be it roads, drainage, etc there are many issues. We will address all these issues. I have a vision."
For the Deputy Mayor post, while the TRS nominated Tarnaka corporator Sri Latha Sobhan Reddy, the BJP nominated Shanker Yadav as their candidate. The voting took place by a show of hands and TRS’s candidate Sri Latha Sobhan Reddy was elected as the Deputy Mayor of Hyderabad. AIMIM supported the TRS candidate by voting in their favour.
On being elected as the Deputy Mayor of Hyderabad, M Sri Latha Sobhan Reddy said she is extremely happy to have been elected. She said, "I am thankful to Chief Minister KCR, KTR and my MLA for choosing me. I have been working since the beginning and because of this, I have been chosen today. I am really happy."
All the 149 newly elected corporators of the GHMC took oath on Wednesday. Shwetha Mohanthy, the presiding officer, administered the oath to the corporators. The proceedings were monitored by Sandeep Singh Sutania who was appointed the election observer.
The oath-taking ceremony, which was the first part of the programme, took place and the corporators were given the choice to take the oath in four languages. They were given the choice to choose from English, Hindu, Telugu or Urdu. They elected corporators were then asked to sign the papers and hand it over to the officials in charge.
The corporators who wanted to take the oath in Telugu went first, followed by Urdu and then those who preferred Hindi. Finally, those who preferred to take the oath in English stood up to take the oath of office.
After the oath-taking ceremony, the presiding officer asked the corporators to take a break and then return by 12:30 pm for the election of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor.
In the GHMC elections held in December, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) won 56 divisions in the 150-member body. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came second with 48 divisions while the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) bagged 44 seats.