India, April 26 -- Two and a half years after losing the 2022 civic polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday reclaimed control of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in what was effectively a walkover.

With the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) boycotting the mayoral election, the process was reduced to a formality. After a 90-minute-long session, BJP's candidate Raja Iqbal Singh secured 133 votes against Congress's Mandeep Singh, who received just eight. One vote was declared invalid.

The win cements the BJP's dominance across all three tiers of Delhi's governance - the Centre, the Delhi Assembly, and now the MCD - a "triple engine government," as the party describes it. This is the first time since 2007 that a single party has contr...