Chandigarh, Dec. 2 -- For the first time in Chandigarh's history, the next mayor will be elected through a show of hands instead of the traditional secret ballot. The election - the last of the 2022 municipal corporation (MC) five-year tenure - will be held in January 2026. Triggered by the shocking vote-rigging scandal of the 2024 polls, the switch to open voting has set the stage for high political drama, with major parties recalibrating strategies and alliances that may strain over candidate selection. In June this year, Punjab governor and UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria approved an amendment to Regulation 6 of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation (Procedure and Conduct of Business) Regulations, 1996, paving the way for the new method of voting. Allowed amid persistent demands from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress for greater transparency in the electoral process, the change aims to curb cross-voting and ballot tampering. Under the revised process, the mayor, senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor will all be elected by raising hands. Deputy commissioner Nishant Yadav confirmed that the upcoming polls will follow the new format. "We are finalising the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), which will be completed by December 15. The final date for the mayoral polls will be announced in the second week of December and elections will be held in January," he said. The first and fourth terms are reserved for a woman candidate from the general category, and the third for a Scheduled Caste candidate. The second and fifth terms are open to any candidate from the general category. The Congress and AAP will once again contest the elections jointly to reclaim the mayor's chair from the BJP, which the alliance had wrested in 2024 by joining forces under the INDIA bloc. The next year, however, the saffron party reclaimed the seat that it had lost in 2024 after eight straight years of control. This time, the Congress is insisting that the mayoral candidate should come from its ranks, while AAP has not disclosed its preference yet. According to party insiders, the probable BJP candidates for the post are Anup Gupta, Maheshinder Singh Sidhu and Saurabh Joshi. From the AAP-Congress alliance, the names doing the rounds include Gurpreet Singh Gabi, Yogesh Dhingra and Damanpreet Singh. The 35-member MC House includes 16 councillors from the BJP, 13 from the AAP, six from the Congress, while another vote comes from the local MP. Despite lacking a majority in the past four terms, the BJP won the mayoral election three times, largely due to cross-voting. In the first term starting January 2022, BJP's Sarabjit Kaur Dhillon was elected by a single-vote margin after one ballot was declared invalid. The next year, BJP's Anup Gupta also won by one vote. The 2024 mayoral election became one of the most controversial in Chandigarh's political history. Presiding officer Anil Masih, a nominated councillor, was caught on camera tampering with eight ballots cast for AAP-Congress candidate Kuldeep Kumar Dhalor, favouring BJP's Manoj Sonkar instead. Despite the alliance holding 20 councillors, the final tally showed 16 votes for Sonkar and 12 for Dhalor. The AAP and Congress moved the Supreme Court, where the then Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud strongly reprimanded the misconduct, saying, "He is murdering democracy. Is this how an officer conducts elections?" The court eventually declared Dhalor the rightful winner, calling the tampering "deliberate". The incident triggered widespread outrage and dealt a blow to the BJP during the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign. In 2025, BJP's Harpreet Kaur Babla won the mayoral position by two votes after cross-voting from opposition councillors tipped the numbers. Notably, Chandigarh currently lacks an anti-defection law, allowing councillors to switch parties before elections. Consequently, party-switching and horse-trading are common before every mayoral contest....