Bathinda, Nov. 5 -- The ruling Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Sham Lal Jain was on Tuesday elected as the senior deputy mayor of the Bathinda municipal corporation (MC), defeating Congress candidate Harvinder Singh Laddu. In the 50-member House, Jain secured 30 votes, while Laddu managed to get 12 votes. Eight councillors abstained from voting. The election was supervised by additional deputy commissioner Poonam Singh. Jain, a three-time councillor, was elected on a Congress ticket in 2021 but later switched allegiance to the AAP. He was recently appointed as an adviser to mayor Padamjeet Singh Mehta, son of Punjab Cricket Association president Amarjit Mehta. The development comes nine months after AAP's Mehta was elected as the Bathinda mayor, despite the party having only one elected councillor in the House at the time. Jain's victory was made possible with support from Congress councillors recently expelled from the party, who are said to be aligned with BJP leader Manpreet Singh Badal, according to people familiar with the development. During the General House meeting, which had a single-point agenda to elect the senior deputy mayor, Bathinda municipal commissioner Kanchan barred mediapersons from entering the conference hall to witness proceedings. The election was necessitated after Congress leader Ashok Kumar was removed from the post of senior deputy mayor on May 2 this year through an AAP-backed no-confidence motion. Meanwhile, the post of deputy mayor remains vacant. Congress leader Master Harmander Singh had resigned in February after realising that councillors from his own party had joined hands with the AAP to oust him. People familiar with the development said the AAP leadership is now eyeing the deputy mayor's post as well. In the 2021 urban local body elections, the Congress had won 43 out of 50 seats in the Bathinda MC. However, its strength has since eroded, with seven councillors from the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Congress defecting to AAP over the past year....