NEW ROLE: New Mayor Vijaya Arun (right) and Deputy Mayor Abdul Saleem (left) flank outgoing Mayor K. Ashraf after the elections in Mangalore on Wednesday.

MANGALORE: Vijaya Arun has been elected Mayor of Mangalore while Abdul Saleem will be Deputy Mayor for the year 2006-07. They defeated their BJP opponents, Mariyamma Thomas and Naveenchandra Shetty, respectively.

Ms. Arun won 42 votes in her favour and 17 against while Mr. Saleem polled 43 in favour and 17 against. Independent councillor Bajilkeri Kamalaksha abstained and another independent member, Jayaprakash, was absent.

The elections were a tame affair as Ms. Arun was chosen in a closed-door meeting of Congress councillors with party leaders and KPCC observers on Wednesday. Ms. Arun will be the fourth woman Mayor of Mangalore after Eunice Britto, Sundari and Hilda Alva. She will have a term of four months as corporation elections are due in May 2007, and the notification is expected some time in January.

Delay in elections

The mayoral elections were delayed owing to a legal contest over the change of reservation category.

Coming from a farmer's family, Ms. Arun is a sportswoman and has been a member of the Congress for 20 years. Mr. Saleem is a councillor from the Falnir ward, has been a block president of the Mangalore south unit of the Congress and vice-president of the district unit of the Youth Congress.

Speaking to presspersons after the elections, Ms. Arun said that her priority was to keep the roads of Mangalore in good condition. She would initiate immediate road repairs, which would be completed before the end of November. She said Mangalore was set to grow in a big way especially in the wake of the Coastal Special Economic Zone and there were still some grey areas when it came to facilities. Though the underground drainage system was in place, it needed to be extended to other areas, which was another big task that was before the Mangalore City Corporation.

Speed up work

Ms. Arun said she would soon call a special meeting of Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation officials to speed up the work that had been taken up by the corporation under the Asian Development Bank funding. Drinking water distribution and the second vented dam for Mangalore was one of her priorities, she added.

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