TEAM HERALD
bureau@herald-goa.com
BELGAUM: Returning to Belgaum after a two-day stay at a resort in Goa, the 32 pro-Marathi corporators succeeded in winning both posts of mayor and deputy mayors at the Belgaum City Corporation (BCC) on Monday.
Attempts made by the Kannada group to win the mayor’s post met with failure as Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) member Mahesh Naik secured 31 votes and defeated Fahim Naikwadi of the Kannada group by five votes to emerge as the new Mayor of Belgaum.
Another MES member Renu Mutkekar polled 31 votes and defeated the Kannada group’s Sarala Herekar by four votes to win the deputy mayor’s post.
The mayoral election had become a prestigious issue for the MES which had a majority of corporators in the 57-member BCC.
Since the last two days, the MES leaders had rushed all of its 32 corporators to a resort in Goa to ensure that none of them switched over to the opponent’s group at the last moment.
Four-time former mayor, Sambhaji Patil, who is sitting MLA from Belgaum Rural constituency, played a vital role in securing MES’s victory in the corporation.
Owing to the prevailing tension between the Kannada-Marathi groups, elaborate security arrangements were made and about 1 km of the area surrounding the BCC complex was thrown out of bounds to the public for the entire day.
